


Would You Believe in a Love at First Sight?

by 1nf1n1tystr1k3s (rahzombie)



Series: Found My Heart [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Love, Fluff and Smut, Funny, Humor, POV First Person, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-04-05 02:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 33
Words: 46,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4162842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rahzombie/pseuds/1nf1n1tystr1k3s
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charon and Amelie, the Lone Wanderer, wander the wastes - sure, searching for her father, but also together discovering new places... and new feelings. Charon starts to discover himself, the person he lost in his 200 years as a glorified slave. Amelie finds there's more to the Wasteland than pain and hunger. Join Amelie and Charon as they struggle to find the balance between what is good, and what is right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: I'm writing this note as of 09/01/17. I've been writing this fic for over two years now, and it's been... wonderful. I'm in the process of rewriting this entire story to make it better, because my skills have evolved since I started. I know the first few chapters are a little rough - I assure you, I work on this every day in some way or another. One day, this will be good. If you, like me, are desperate for more Charon/FLW fic, I encourage you to give me a chance, because I have... just so much to share with you. Thank you for reading.)

It's been nine months since my Mistress Amelie bought my contract off that asshole, Ahzrukhal, for a thousand caps. At the time all I could think was "That's all I'm worth? A thousand caps? Thirty years of undying, unquestioning service, and all I'm worth to you is a thousand caps?" Now, nine months later, I'm fucking grateful for it.

When I met my mistress, she was a young, damaged child. Two months fresh out of Vault 101, chock full of scars, dirt, blood, and tears. I didn't know it then, but she was heartbroken over the temporary loss of her father - the man who ran away from everything safe to continue a project he abandoned 20 years ago when she was born: Project Purity. The idea that a bunch of scientists can purify all the radiation from the Wasteland, starting with the water in the Potomac. Eventually it will spread to the plantlife, and I am sure eventually animals will start to evolve, or devolve, back to being unmutated monsters over the years. Of course, that's only if it works - which I'm not sure it will. I've heard of thousands of people trying in the two hundred years since the Great War, since the bombs dropped, and it's never worked before. Why should it now?

My mistress - Amelie, as she insisted I call her - had spared me one glance when she first walked through the double doors into The Ninth Circle - my own personal hellhole corner of Underworld. Her look seemed angry somehow, as if I had done something to offend her. And maybe I had; in those days, I was nothing more than a slave to Ahzrukhal's whim, and his whim often meant beating innocent folks half to death. I hurt a lot of families in the thirty years I was under his rule. Later, she explained to me that she wasn't angry with me - she was determined. She had heard about my contract and desperately needed to save me. It's just like her, of course. Spare the hideous, monstrous ghoul from the life he deserves. Of course, it doesn't work that way - even if she set fire to my contract and ordered me to be free, I couldn't. Not having an employer would only cause me to wander the Wastes endlessly, desperately searching for orders, while I burn from the inside out. It didn't take Amelie long to understand that, and she let up on trying to free me. Now, we have an understanding - I am ordered to do things I like, say things I want to say, and to be... myself. I defend her in combat, protect her from harsh weather, and run the errands that are too dangerous for her (like the time we had to find medical supplies in downtown DC for Reilly's Rangers but had not yet eradicated the Super Mutants in the area. I couldn't have her risking her neck out there while my ghoul self can skirt right by, unseen by them, could I?). In return, she cares for me; always making sure I eat, and sleep, and stay warm on cold nights. Our relationship is more friendship than business. I've never had an employer like her.

As I watch Amelie quietly roll out of the bed we share in our Megaton shack, wearing nothing but a tank top and undershorts, I'm grateful for her finding me. She turns back to me, seeing me looking at her body (and not for the first time in our nine months), and chuckles. She lays a hand, milky white and scattered with thick, red scars on my peeling, grotesque chest and says, "Morning, Charon. How'd you sleep?"  
"Decent as always, Mist-...Amelie." Two hundred years of habit (habit, orders, commands... same thing) cannot be broken easily; it will take a while for me to stop calling her my Mistress. Nine months is barely a dent in my entire life's timeline. "Decent as is every night I'm next to you." If I'm being honest, Amelie is the warmest smoothskin I've ever met - her natural body temperature must be at least 99 degrees. And as it turns out, being a ghoul and missing large portions of your skin means you lose a lot of body heat, and I hate it. The only times I'm ever warm are when I'm swarmed by mild radiation... and when I'm next to her. As a result, we end up touching quite often - holding hands, sleeping next to each other. Sometimes on especially cold trips I have to have her climb on my back and I carry her through the Wastes, else I'd freeze half to death.  
Amelie flushes deep red and taps the center of my chest with her slender fingers. "Well, then get up. I want to be up, fed and out of here in an hour. We have a big day ahead of us."  
"We do?"  
She hesitates. Looks away from me. "I... want to try to clear up the Tenpenny Tower situation. And before you try to tell me how stupid of an idea it is, I know. But it's eating away at me. There are perfectly fine ghouls that need a home, and so many extra rooms in that damn tower that I have to try. Besides, there's nothing else we can do about my Dad until we can dig up some more dirt on where he went. We might as well do some good in this damned world."  
"I wasn't going to tell you it's stupid. It may not be the smartest idea, but I know how strongly you feel about it. We should try to do... something."  
"And if it takes shooting that goddamn Tenpenny myself, then so be it."


	2. Chapter 2

As we approach to the security doors of Tenpenny Tower, I have to ask. "Amelie, what will you have me do?"  
"For once, Charon, I'm gonna need you to stay quiet. The ghouls are mad that you're with a human, the humans are mad that I'm with a ghoul. They know I'm your 'employer'", she gestures with her hands, "so as long as we don't let anyone in on what our actual situation is, we should be fine. Unfortunately, that means you staying quiet and acting all pensive and disturbed and shit."  
My rusted, old, half-dead heart thumps when she says things like I'm with a ghoul and our situation. I've never had an employer actually care about me before, whether it was friendship, or lust, or anything. If an employer desired certain... activities, they could order it of me, but as a choice? I don't get to make it. And I know Amelie would never order that of me. I understand her feelings, but sometimes I just want to fucking kiss her and feel those warm, soft lips against my chapped and frigid ones. But those are not thoughts for now and I don't skip a beat. "Yes, Mistress." She turns to chastise me, but I wink and she smirks instead.

She buzzes the intercom to get us into the Tower. The security guard, whose name I don't bother to remember, as always is rude: "Yeah, yeah, keep your panties on!"  
Amelie rolls her eyes at me. "This guy is the woooorst. Let's go."  
The first minute of entry into Tenpenny Tower is always the harshest. We've been here a handful of times already, and yet every time one of these assholes sees me they visibly recoil in horror and disgust. I know I'm ugly, alright? You don't have to rub it in. But I must keep my mouth shut. It was an order. We make our way up to the Suites where Tenpenny himself, that old bastard, resides. He's the last stop in trying to convince the residents to let the Ghouls move in to the spare apartments here. I know he won't go for it, and I think Amelie knows he won't go for it, but by God, she's going to try anyway. Or else, like she said, she'll shoot him herself.  
"And this is where I get off. Will you wait outside his door for me?"  
"Of course. I will be here when you are ready." As always, I take my rightful place with my back to the wall, shotgun drawn, eyes and ears (or what's left of them) vigilant. Other than a visibly disgusted security guard shooting me nasty looks every few minutes, there's not much to see. I wish this guy would swallow his gun already.  
After twenty minutes of patient waiting (and, I'll admit, distracted thinking about that one time I accidentally caught sight of her when she was bathing in the Potomac), she emerges pissed as hell. She nods to me and we set off to the elevator back down to the main level of the Tower.  
"So, I'm guessing that went well?"  
"As well as you'd expect. That fucker not only refused to hear me out, but said that if he saw me leaving the Warrington tunnel, he'd shoot me on sight! Asshole doesn't deserve his own, and I quote, 'terrace from which to shoot vermin'. Snobby jackass."  
"He can't see the tunnel from that balcony. Don't worry about that."  
"I wasn't. I have a rifle of my own to snipe with. Even if I was sure that would be an issue, I would come out of that tunnel ready to aim."  
"That's my girl." The anger that marrs her face melts away when she looks at me and smiles. "What is the plan now?"  
"We're going to go talk to Roy Phillips. I think it's time we did something drastic."


	3. Chapter 3

"Well, well. If it isn't our little Lone Wanderer, savior of the Wastes. What the hell do you want, smoothskin?" Roy Phillips' gruff voice welcomes us to the Warrington metro tunnel.  
"I want to help you, Roy."  
"Oh, yeah? And how is one little smoothskin gonna do that?"  
Amelie rifles through her pockets and pulls out a large, worn key, and proudly holds it up to Roy. "I'm gonna let you into Tenpenny Tower."  
A key? "Uh, when the hell did you snag that?" Remembering I'm supposed to be nothing but her bodyguard of sorts, I reluctantly add "...mistress."  
"Right before we left! We walked right by Chief Gustavo, and I saw an opportunity to make this a little easier for all of us, so I took it. I guess if you didn't even notice, he'll be none the wiser, too." She repockets the key. Sure, we're about to do a mildly evil thing, letting those bigots get eaten alive by feral ghouls, but Roy can't be trusted with it.  
"Alright, kid. What's the catch?" Roy's eyes never left the key while it was out, and even through the layers of armor I heard his heart beat faster.  
"Nothing serious. First, I don't want Charon or I, or any other companions I may bring along to be harmed if we ever come around these parts. I know there's only so much you can do about that, what with the ferals and all, but it would be nice if I knew you wouldn't shoot us immediately after we finish this.  
Second, I would like to have one of the suites upstairs. I'll pay whatever you want for it, I don't mind. I just want one.  
Third... I get Tenpenny."  
"Now, now, princess. I've been fighting with that asshole for two decades. I want his head for my own. I've earned it."  
"...Fine. Then I get Burke."  
"Burke? Whatever. If the ferals don't get him, you're welcome to him. Everything else you're welcome to. Loot, rooms, whatever the hell your fresh little heart desires. Go unlock that door and at nightfall, I'm gonna need you to hack into the terminal in the basement to let us in there. I'll meet you there."  
"It's a deal."

As soon as we're out of eyesight, she wraps her arms around my torso and puts her head on my chest. I wrap one arm around her back and put one hand on her head, petting her hair the way she told me she likes it.  
"Charon... do you think less of me?"  
"For what?"  
"For basically condemning twenty mostly innocent people to death, just because they're bigoted and filled with hate. They're not evil. Most of them have never actually hurt anyone, not really. I don't feel like I'm making the wrong choice, but I'm afraid that you'll think bad of me for my decisions."  
"Oh. I had never even considered thinking less of you for this. For all of the times in my long life when I needed someone around to defend ghouls, even as drastically as this, no one stepped up and did it. It is about time someone does. This can be known as the new age, when ghouls and humans can live together in harmony... or suffer death. Other bigots will learn their lesson quickly once word of this gets around."  
She pulls away from my chest and looks into my ruined face. "I don't want anyone to know it was me. I mean, I don't want Three Dog to tell the Wasteland that I did this."  
"Then our next stop after this will be to his studio to do a little cleanup. Okay? We will take care of this. I promise." I lay a soft (well, as soft as it can be with my peeling lips) kiss on the top of her head. I take her left arm and check the time on her Pip-boy. "Now, it is almost dusk. We should go get everything ready, prepare everything, and then eat something. I don't remember seeing you eat anything for the last few days." We detach from each other and make our way through the maze-like tunnels of Warrington.  
"You know how I get when I'm determined. I get so focused I don't get hungry."  
"And that is why I am here to remind you to do such things."  
"Hey, you know what'll be great when everything is, well, cleared up?"  
"What is that?"  
"Our suite will have a shower. And not just a shower, but a shower with running, hot water. Hot water, Charon!"  
"I have not had the privilege of a hot shower in eight decades. What an exciting promise." Our Megaton house has only cold, irradiated water that flows into a dirty, centuries-old bathtub.  
"Then you can have the first turn." She gives me her quick sideways smirk. We walk the ten minute travel back to Tenpenny Tower in silence, focused on the job at hand. She almost trips in the sand a few times, but thankfully doesn't hurt herself. The boots she looted off a Raider's body are too big for her feet, but she will "grow into them eventually", she says. It has been a while since I've been human, but I don't think human feet grow that much after a certain age. I could be wrong. Still, they're better than the cloth shoes she had when she left the Vault. Those were most certainly not fit for the Wasteland.  
She hits the intercom buzzer to be let onto the Tower premises. "Yeah, yeah, keep your panties on!" I wonder if this security guard ever says anything else.  
I follow her inside and into the room that leads to the tunnels from within the Tower. Who knows why they would ever need an access door that leads to the metro from in here, but it's here, and it works. I keep watch while she unlocks the door and forces it open for the first time in at least a hundred years, propping it open with some broken cinderblock pieces. We sneak our way out of the access room and back out the door, heading for the basement; here is where the access door is. There's a strange window where I can see Roy, his lackey Michael, and his wife Bessie waiting amongst a horde of feral ghouls, right outside the huge access door. Why would there ever need to be a window here? It is coming in handy now, but why would they have ever needed it when this was built? Questions that will never be answered.  
A few keystrokes on the terminal will unlock the access door. Amelie's finger hovers over a key, shaking a bit. "Mistress? What's wrong?"  
"I'm just... thinking. Trying to make sure I'm making the right choice."  
I put my mouth close to her ear and say in a hushed tone, "Unless you want there to be a firefight, I think it's too late to make any other choice. You were very sure about this not twenty minutes ago."  
"And twenty minutes ago, I didn't have the fates of two dozen people literally at my fingertips. It's a little harrowing for one person to decide. You know what? Fuck it. They deserve it." She smacks the key and the access door opens. Roy Phillips approaches the strangely placed window.  
"Hey, great job, kid! Meet me out front, I got a present for you."  
"A present? What, is it my birthday?" She says, sarcastically, though I pick up on it a second too late.  
"Not for another thirty-seven days, Amelie."  
"That was sarcasm, Charon. Wait, you remember my birthday? I told you what it was months ago!"  
"I have a very good memory."  
"Clearly. Let's go." And we head back up to the front doors of the Tower. Roy is already there and waiting for us. He approaches Amelie holding a small, vaguely colorful bundle in his hand.  
"Here, take this mask. It'll keep you safe from the ferals. Just don't get too close to them, or they'll sniff you out. Don't forget to put. it. on." He holds the bundle out to her, and now I see what it is - a mask made to look like a ghoul's face. It's a hideous patchwork thing, looking like it's made out of actual ghoul skin. It might just be. Amelie tentatively takes it from him, and he heads back into the Tower. She stares at the ghoul mask in her hands, then looks at me, then back to the mask. She shrugs once, and puts it on. It's hideous.  
"I don't know that the 'sniff you out' part is true. Ghouls tend to have a very bad sense of smell due to damage done to the olfactory receptors when our bodies start rotting and falling apart. My sense of smell is decent due to the modifications some doctors made to me one hundred years ago, but it's still not perfect. Even in close quarters, a feral ghoul would probably not be able to tell you apart from any other ghoul. That mask is very... convincing." And disgusting. How could she ever care for someone that looks like that thing permanently? I knew I avoided mirrors for a reason.  
"Well, that's good to know." Her voice is muffled through the small hole in the mask meant for a mouth. "This thing smells terrible. The sooner I can get it off, the better. Let's go." She turns to open the front doors to the Tower.  
"Are you sure you want to go in now? It's most likely a bit... messy at the moment. You may not want to see."  
"I know what I've done, Charon. I can't shy away from it. That, and I have to get to Burke before he either flees the Tower, or one of the ferals get him. Come on." And in we go.


	4. Chapter 4

Amelie tenses up as soon as we enter the first floor lobby, one hand on her pistol, waiting to be sniffed out by the ferals. It never happens. They don't even give us so much as a glance. Thankfully, the combination of my ghoul self and the convincing enough ghoul mask on Amelie doesn't seem to cause alarm within them. If she had had a human companion with her, they might have noticed something was strange. Realizing the feral ghouls were not, and would never again be a threat, Amelie dutifully marches to the elevator that leads up to the Suites - only two out of four of which are in use; Tenpenny's, and Burke's. I can only hope Amelie will not want one of their used suites when all of this is taken care of. I shudder to think of sleeping in the same bed either of those sad excuses for men slept in.

Burke's door is locked. Obviously. Amelie starts to pull her lockpicking kit (consisting of a few hundred bobby pins in a small pouch, and a very small screwdriver), but seems to change her mind. She knocks twice on his door and immediately, almost too late, remembers to take off the ghoul mask.  
"Burke? Burke?! Help! I came here to see you and there are all these... ugh, just let me in! Please!" She winks at me. We hear the scuffle of objects being moved away from the door, a soft click, and half of a man's face appears in the crack of the doorway.  
"Amelie? My beloved? Come in! Come in here! Do you know what's out there? How did you manage to get up here and WHY is that thing following you?"  
"Burke, my dear, this is Charon. He is my bodyguard, and he is perfectly safe. He isn't feral like the ones downstairs," she says, as we enter and she locks the door behind me.  
"It's not just the feral ones, beloved. The regular ones are on the warpath, too. I wouldn't trust a ghoul as far as I could throw him," he sneers at me. I can't wait for her to take him out already, but I know that's not how she plays the game. She's like a cat with her prey cornered. She has to batter him around a bit, get her paws dirty before she can go in for the kill strike. Not at all like me; shoot first, ask questions later. But then, sixty years of forced training and a chip implant will do that to you. Here's a tip, kids - when you join the military, read your contract thoroughly.  
"Well, dear, Charon lacks the ability to disobey my orders. He is as safe as a ghoul can get. Now, I know you're upset with me for not responding to all of your love letters, my dear Burke. I'm so sorry about that. I've been incredibly busy trying to find my father and haven't had time to get back to Megaton. And what's this about sending the Talon Company after me? We've had a few tussles with them already in the last few months."  
"My love, it's a mistake. I would never do such a thing. I love you."  
"Ah, Burke, but what about this?" She pulls a folded piece of paper out of her pocket - the contract we found on the Talon merc's bodies after we annihilated them the first time.

Find Amelie and show how we treat people that fail to live up to Mr. Tenpenny's expectations. Do not fail me. You know what will happen if you arouse my displeasure. - B

Amelie drops her voice about four octaves, using what I like to call her 'scary voice'. Calm, deep and accusing, almost like a purr, "If it wasn't you, Burke, who else would it be?" And before he even has time to come up with a lie, her gun is out of its holster and aimed right at his heart. Note in one hand, plasma pistol in the other, and a look of only accusation and anger in her eyes. "Truth. Now. And I might not kill you."  
"Alright, fine! I do love you, Amelie, but I knew that you had to learn a lesson about disappointing Mr. Tenpenny, and disappointing me. What better way than to make you fight for your life? Megaton, that disgusting pit of an eyesore, what good is it for? Its people are scum, whores, or drug addicted and don't know their right from their left. Who are you to decide that they get to live?"  
"And who are you to decide who dies? You're no better than me. At the same time, I'm no better than you - I just helped slaughter an entire Tower of mostly innocent people, didn't I. We're two sides of a blood-covered coin, Burke. Question is, where do we find our morality? Who tells us what to do? Ourselves?" She flips off the plasma pistol's equivalent of a safety switch, drops the contract to the floor, and takes the butt of her gun in both hands, never blinking and never moving off her target. "Or an old man whose own life isn't worth anything more than his money?"  
After two centuries of being the Amelie in this situation, I'm very used to seeing the panic that boils over in someone's eyes when they face the barrel of a gun and know it's the last thing they're ever going to see. I used to enjoy it, or maybe I thought I enjoyed it. Now, I just pity this man. I pity the life he could have led, the bad decisions that led him down this road. The horrible things I've done in my life, I would never have chosen to do them. Men like him and Tenpenny, they choose to.  
Before he can whip out his pistol, a shot fires and he drops to the ground. He slowly turns to green ash as he looks up at her and whispers "Fuck you."  
"Oh no, my dear Burke. Fuck you." The sly grin on her face stirs something within me, a feeling I haven't accessed in decades. It's not often this side of her comes out, but when it does I feel a rush in my body that's almost indescribable.  
Amelie sifts through the green ash pile that was once Mr. Burke of Tenpenny Tower, trying to find anything of value. I get to work looking through his cabinets and his safe, finding only a few sacks of bottle caps, more than anyone's fair share of alcohol, and some inhalers of Jet. Ironic, for a man who wanted to blow up a town of "drug addicted scum". Either he was taking it himself, or he was selling it, making him no better than them. Good riddance. I start to close the safe and Amelie puts her hand on mine, stopping me - actually, curling her fingers around mine. "We can sell the Jet to that couple in Rivet City with the drug shop. The... the cannolis, or... No, they're the Cantelli's. The alcohol we can keep for ourselves to celebrate." She shoves two bottles of Whiskey in my pack and three assorted liquor bottles in hers, and puts the Jet in one of the bottle cap sacks.  
"Don't forget to put the ghoul mask back on."  
"Oh, shit. Thanks. That would have been messy, huh?"  
"Not with me around, Mistress." She sticks her tongue out at me and it takes more effort than I'd like to admit to not take her in my arms and kiss her once and for all. My seductress. But then she puts the ghoul mask on, and the moment is over. Good. My dead heart can't take it.  
"Let's get out of here, you. I want to try to get home before morning. I'm so tired and I think I need to deal with the things I did today in a healthy way that doesn't involve copious amount of alcohol and crying into the manly chest of my ghoul companion."  
"Not that I would mind." I take her soft hand in my withered one, trying to convey with a gentle squeeze that I really wouldn't mind. It's not just my contract that makes me care about her well-being, mental or otherwise. It's difficult to convey with words, as many of my past employers didn't let me talk often, let alone let me express my emotions. It's a strange feeling for me.


	5. Chapter 5

About halfway through our six hour journey home to Megaton, the temperature of the Wastes drops significantly. This is normal in the middle of the night when the sun isn't there to warm the sand and the air, not unlike any other desert that's ever existed. Of course, no one knows that anymore since most of the remaining population wasn't around before the Great War. Too many bodies you come across in the deserts of the Wastes, people that just ended up too cold and couldn't go on. I feel like that now; the muscles in my arms and fingers are tense and stiff from the cold. I could definitely make it the rest of the way and survive just fine - I've done it many times before. But I don't have to, not with Amelie by my side. I reach over and take her hand, and she interlocks her fingers with mine.  
"Oh, God, Charon! Your hand is so cold! Why didn't you tell me? I could have totally warmed you up." She takes my right hand in both of hers and starts rubbing it vigorously, then moves up my forearm and rubs that, too, and a small wave of pleasure runs through me at her touch. Ugh, fuck. She's going to be the end of me.  
"I didn't realize I was this cold until now. And I did tell you, by holding your hand." Still gently sliding her hand up and down my forearm, she looks up at me (and there's quite a ways to look, as she is so small she barely comes up to my shoulder) and smiles the biggest, happiest smile, though her eyes seem sad. "Would you mind if I carried you? I could run, and we would be able to get home a little faster. I know you are already tired. This walk does not help."  
"Sure, Charon." I put one arm around her shoulders and swing one under her knees, accidentally brushing her behind on the way. Whoops. "Don't strain yourself though, alright? If you get tired, feel free to put me down and we'll both walk."  
"Yes, Amelie." There are a few benefits to carrying her like this - the fireman's carry, we used to call it. One is her body heat being in such supply so close to my body. Another is her face being so close to mine. But the best is the way she keeps her hand on the back of my head, softly tracing circles in my hair. This action, if nothing else, is my weakness, and a few times I've accidentally let out deep groans. And yet, every time, she still does it. Vixen.  
Me running with her in my arms cuts our remaining travel time in half. We storm into our Megaton home, rush upstairs, remove armor and climb into bed in almost record time. I'm freezing, she's exhausted, we're both filthy. She assumes her usual sleeping position; top half curled up on my chest, bottom half wrapped up in my legs, and my arm around her to keep her safe.  
"Thank you for carrying me the rest of the way. I probably would have collapsed halfway and then you'd have to figure out what to do with my dead body."  
"Hmm. I haven't wanted to consider that possibility. Perhaps I would bring it back to town and make them commemorate you with a statue."  
"No! Anything but a statue! Those Atom freaks would probably worship that, too."  
"And why shouldn't you be worshipped?"  
"Oh, what? Me? A dumb kid straight out of Vaultsville who barely knows how to do anything out here?"  
"No, the beautiful woman who knows what she wants in this life and takes what she can. The woman who, albeit unknowingly, risked her life to free me from Ahzrukhal just because she knew his ownership over me was wrong, that it was killing me. The wonderful, amazing woman who does what's right instead of choosing a side. That's what they would worship."  
Her heart rate quickens and I can hear tears in her voice, "Charon, you're sweet on me."  
"I'm just an honest man." An honest man who's infatuated with you more and more every day. I can't resist planting one kiss on her forehead, though such a direct show of affection burns in my chest.

As we always do, we wake up a tangle of limbs and hair - all hers, of course. What remains of my hair is too short and delicate to be much of a pain. I spit and pull long brown hair out of my mouth as she laughs and apologizes - as always. She crawls over me to get out of bed (making sure to ruffle some hair in my face, of course), hesitating a little more than is probably normal when she accidentally brushes against my groin with her arm. Only one thin piece of clothing and our blanket separates her from my manhood, and as soon as that thought pops in my head I struggle to kick it out before it becomes a noticeable problem.  
"I'm gonna take a bath and wash yesterday off me. I'll leave the door open in case you need anything." She winks and stalks out of the room, towel in hand. Thinking of her naked and wet makes heat travel down from my face down to my groin, burning all the way, but it's finally not an unpleasant burn; it's warm, warmer than Amelie's skin on a cold night, warmer than radiation. I shake it off and stretch, watching my bare muscles move through my arms. I may hate most things about being a Ghoul, but that part is fairly interesting. Not long after Amelie and I first met and had a private moment to ourselves, she asked if it was alright if she explore some of my bare body to see how ghouls really work; she was surprised to find out that there's a strange membrane over our exposed parts that eventually appears, much like scars on regular skin. It feels rough and weathered, but protects the muscles and organs inside while still allowing us to look as horrific as possible. It's very strange, and pre-War doctors would be baffled by it. Post-War doctors are usually just disgusted.  
I decide to get started on some of the things we need to do today; visit Walter and drop off scrap metal so he can keep up with Megaton's water demands, trade some things with Moira, and help pay off Nova and Gob's debts to that dick, Moriarty. They don't know we're doing it, and Moriarty knows the minute he tries to act like that money isn't going to their debt, he'll be dead and it won't matter. Amelie was toying with the idea of saving our caps, paying off the debts at once and letting Moriarty destroy their contracts, and then killing Moriarty anyway and taking all the caps back to give to Nova and Gob - I wouldn't argue. He's just another Burke that the world doesn't need.  
Since we're staying in town, at least for the day, I don't need my armor - just my pants and black shirt. Good. I'm sick of constantly wearing my armor. I throw on my clothes and walk past the bathroom, first hesitating, then deciding it's not worth it to pretend I don't want to look, like she doesn't want me to look. It's nothing I haven't already haven't seen anyway, right?  
"I'm going to go run some of our errands. You relax. Do you want anything while I'm gone?" I can't act like my eyes don't quickly survey her entire body, finding only perfection from head to toe. She notices and turns bright red. A difficult feat for someone whose skin is as dark as hers.  
"We need some more food. Get your favorites, and you know what I like. Oh, and some Nukas. I finally emptied the machine downstairs."  
"Yes, ma'am." I turn to leave and she half-shouts "don't ma'am me!"


	6. Chapter 6

I feel strange being so domestic - I was twenty when I joined the military and thirty when the bombs dropped. I never had a chance to get married or even fall in love. There was once a girl I dated when I was still in school, and I may have once had feelings for one of my squadmates back in the day, but neither of those were strong enough to count as love. More importantly, it was over two hundred years ago. All I knew aside from my own family was the military and my training. This is all new to me - being so close with someone, both physically and emotionally. Counting on her to have my back, in combat and out of it. Falling asleep next to her every night (or every few nights, depending on how long our excursions go on for) and knowing she won't literally stab me in the back. It's all territory I'm not familiar with, and yet it feels so natural. As if I was made 230 years ago for this very period of time, as if I was made for her.  
I sort out our packs from the last few days - to keep, to store, to sell, to give away. 100 caps in this sack for Moriarty. Spare parts for Walter and Moira. Liquor for the refrigerator. These caps for the savings sack in the locker. I think it's best to go in a spiral around Megaton, making my stops along the way; Walter, Moira, Moriarty, Brass Lantern, home. Two hours out of my day, max. Then I can get back to her. That will be plenty of time for her to deal with the things she must be feeling after the last few days, and long enough for her to decide if she wants to talk about it.

Walter accepts the scrap metal; Moira trades a few gun parts for caps and the few Nuka Colas she had (all the while giving me a very strange look; I know she's very interested in experimenting on me, but the look on her face every time she sees me betrays her); Moriarty accepts the caps in his private office, hiding the desk drawer from me as he hides the caps away (as if I was that stupid, and as if I still wouldn't be able to notice enough caps in that drawer to buy out the entire town of Megaton and then some). Visiting the Brass Lantern is not as easy as it should have been.  
"Jenny. Can I have three salisbury steaks, four pork and beans, three sugar bombs, and as much mac and cheese as you have? Oh, as much Nuka Cola as you're willing to part with. I'll pay extra for buying you out."  
"Sure, hon." She turns to Leo, her husband, and gives him my order. She sounds angry at him. "How's Amelie been? Seems like you guys never leave the house except to travel outside. I don't know how you can keep doing it. It's safe in here, there's always food... and there's always a bed to fall asleep in." She gives me a strange look, similar to the one Moira was eyeing me with. Is this what I think it is? "Sure, you have Amelie, and there's always Nova, for a price. But Amelie is just a girl, and Nova is just a whore," she almost whispers while she brushes her fingers along my forearm.  
Whoa. "Jenny, I just want my food and to go home."  
"Charon, I heard that you aren't with Amelie by choice. I heard you're basically a slave. I could free you, Charon. You could protect me. We could escape this hellhole town." Thankfully, Leo walked through the front door of the Brass Lantern just in time. I could kiss him I'm so grateful.  
"Here's your stuff, man. I'd say about 230 caps for the lot, since I threw in about seven packages of blamco. Have a good one!" He reenters the building and I don't have time to take my things and escape before Jenny reaches for my arm again, this time digging her dirty nails ruined by malnourishment into my skin.  
"Charon, we could be happy."  
"Jenny, you're a married woman. I'm an otherwise occupied man. I belong only to Amelie. I cannot be freed. And I can assure you, Jenny, if I wanted to fuck, I have a girl at home who would be beyond delighted to fuck me." I throw 200 caps on the counter. "Have a nice day." I try to look calm and collected as I walk away, but I'm in such a rush to get into the safety of my house that I probably look like I've been scared. And I guess I have been - we just lost a convenient food supply source, since I sure as hell am not allowing either of us to spend our caps at the Brass Lantern anymore. I guess Moira owes Amelie enough favors that she'd be willing to be the middleman for a while.

I finally get inside the house and bolt the door behind me. Amelie is sitting on the ruined couch with a weathered old book open in her lap, but she's fiddling with the tuners on her Pip-Boy, looking concerned. I love this look on her face - how the space between her eyebrows crinkles and her lips crush against each other, so determined. I drop the spoils of the day on the small table in the kitchen and move to join her.  
"What's wrong?"  
"I somehow tuned into some radio station but it's just this rhythmic beeping. I know it's the same beeps over and over, but there's nothing explaining what they mean. Do you know?"  
"That's Morse code. It was popular before the War, before humanity really entered the technological age. It's a way the military used to communicate easily. I might still remember some of it, I had to learn it when I was being trained. Let me hear, maybe it says something interesting." I have to listen to the broadcast a few times before I can pick it out. "Essentially what it's saying is 'calling anyone, this is Oscar Tango, over' repeatedly. It must have been a relay that's been playing since the Great War, since no one would bother to use Morse code these days. Nothing to be concerned about." I put my hand on the side of her face, gently rubbing away that worry line on her forehead with my thumb. Her eyes close at my touch and a small noise of content leaves her throat. After a few minutes of this, she opens one eye to peek over at me. "You seem distracted. Or maybe angry. What's wrong?"  
"Nothing important. Jenny at the Lantern made a bit of a pass at me. I don't think we should shop there for a while. She seemed very desperate to run away with me."  
"Hm. Then I guess I'll have to have Moira get our food for us for a while and we'll just pay her extra."  
"Funny, that's what I was thinking as well. It's interesting, Jenny tried to tell me that she would free me. That I was your slave and I'm not here by your side by my own choice. I would love to say I choose to be with you, but unfortunately we both know that isn't true. However, I know that if I did have the choice..." I take her hand in mine, "I would choose you every time."  
She squeezes my hand, though I barely feel her tiny pressure through my thick and weathered skin. "I wish things were different, Charon." Her voice sounds so small, so far away.  
"I know. I do, as well. But if this is as good as it can get... I am satisfied."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: Domestic Charon is domestic as heck and I love it. I kept wishing I was seeing more of it in the fics I consumed, so I figured I should just write it myself. There may or may not be considerable amounts of it in the future! It depends on the direction this fic takes. Enjoy!)


	7. Chapter 7

Amelie is dead set on finding the source of the radio signal. "Maybe it's an active signal and someone needs help," she says. "At the very least, maybe there's cool stuff to loot," she says. "Fine," I says. "But I'm not carrying you back if you end up getting hurt," I says. Even though we both know I absolutely would.  
Her Pip-Boy is able to give an approximate location of the tower that sent out the signal. At least having a direction to go in will help - after all, if a tower is intact enough to be sending out signals, it's still standing. And if it's still standing, it's standing tall enough to notice. I set our packs with enough gear to last us at least a few days, longer if we're very sparing with it; food, pure water, irradiated water for me, enough ammo to take down the Talon Company tenfold, and a quarter of our total cap supply. It never hurts to carry money on you, even if you may not need it. As I'm setting our packs by the door and about to get food for the both of us for now, Amelie throws me three inhalers of Jet, a Mentats, and three Psycho injectors.  
"What are these for?"  
"Emergencies. In case we're really in the shit, we can sell 'em or trade them away. Everyone out here is desperate for chems, right?"  
"That is true. I will put them in your pack, since I'm carrying a lot of water."  
"That's fine. Are you about to get something to eat?"  
"Yes. I was going to make you some pork and beans."  
"Thanks. Take your time, 'cause I still have a couple things to take care of, alright? I'll be down in a few."  
That's strange. It's not normal for her to withhold information from me, even as minor as this sounds. Still, by all technicalities, she gave me an order, so I will obey my Mistress and do my duties.  
Two cans-of-pork-and-beans-cooked-and-one-consumed later, she trumps her way down the stairs not wearing her pants, but instead carrying them in both hands. As I open my mouth to question her sanity, she stops me.  
"Look, Charon." She points to a small sewn square on the inside of her pants, the layer that comes between her and her armor. "Your contract is in here. I folded it up, wrapped it in this weird, soft metal mesh I found while scavving once, sewed it together, and sewed it in here! And when I put my pants on...," and she does, "You'd never even know. It's on my upper inner thigh, where no one would ever go, and you'd never know it was there. I've been so scared of someone finding your contract in my bag and somehow being able to hurt you, and now that's not a problem anymore. Ah. I feel so much better. Now I need to eat or I'm going to die." And she sits at our tiny table and quietly eats her pork and beans. I shouldn't be, but I am shocked that she worried that much about my contract, about harm coming down upon me. And then to think she would choose to put my contract, the only non-human thing in this world that matters to me, so close to such an intimate body part... I can't hold back a shudder.  
She peeks at me over her bowl. "You okay?"  
"Fine. Just a little chill."  
"Okay, but it's like 80 degrees in here. If you're getting sick, we can postpone the trip. Can ghouls even get sick?"  
"Not in the same way you smoothskins do."  
"I guess I'll ask about that another time when I'm not eating my favorite meal. Not that I think you're gross. It's thinking of sickness that grosses me out."  
"Well, I am not getting sick. I'm fine. We're going on this trip because I have to prove to you that not everything in this wasteland is an adventure, and not everyone crying for help is a good guy."  
"I know that, Charon. I just get these gut feelings and sometimes I can't ignore them. I guess I'm my father's daughter that way." She gives me a sad smile. I'm compelled to reach over the table and take her hand, anything to take that sadness off her face. When we find her father, I'm going to have to have a few words with him myself about taking care of your damn kids.


	8. Chapter 8

It surprises both of us when we arrive at the tower mostly unscathed; her with one bullet graze wound, nothing overly serious. There were two Raiders along the way, which is strange since they usually seem to travel in threes, don't they?  
There is a tower surrounded by a fence with a locked gate - I keep watch while Amelie swiftly picks the lock. All the fence contains is the tower itself and one electric box with a switch.  
"Hm. This is turned on, so let's turn it off and see if the signal goes away. If this ends up being nothing, I'll be disappointed we came all this way." She flips the switch down, checks her Pip-Boy, and the radio signal disappears. Flips it back up, the signal reappears. She shrugs, and exits the fenced area to re-lock the gate. "Well, we're in the right place, at least. I was kind of hoping there'd be more, though..." As she turns away, she sees a manhole cover on the street not five feet away from the gate. She cocks her head to the side ever so slightly and gets this sly look on her face. The one that I love to see, but hate to reckon with. She doesn't move a muscle when she flashes her eyes at me, and what else can I do but shrug and follow her to the manhole.  
She struggles to lift it for a good few minutes before it finally knocks her off her feet. "Alright, I might need some help with this one," she says defeatedly. We each take one end of the manhole cover and pull, and finally it comes up. The tunnels within reek of death and waste. "Oh, hold on. I have a couple wraps we can use to cover our noses."  
"Or what's left of our noses."  
"Yes, that too. Here." She gives me what used to be some sort of bandana. It fits easily around my head and secured in place, unable to block out all the smell of the sewers underneath us but good enough. "Well... Let's go!" She moves to jump in feet-first.  
"What the hell are you doing? You're going to break an ankle. You don't know how deep this goes. Feel around the inside of this hole and see if there's a ladder."  
"Fine! Oh, here's the ladder. Okay, now let's go!" And she disappears into the dark tunnel. "Oh! I found the bottom! Probably about eight feet? Come down!" I dutifully follow, barely through the hole before my feet touch the ground. The tunnel doesn't seem so dark on this end, as it's illuminated by one small spotlight at the very end of this path. My eyes adjust just in time to see a mohawked Raider pop their head through a doorway to see what all the commotion is about. Amelie follows my eyes and ducks behind a barricade conveniently placed a foot away from the ladder, dragging me down with her. A spray of bullets and "You're mine, bitch!" sounds out ahead of us, bouncing off the walls of the sewer tunnel.  
In the military, I learned the importance of slowing my breathing and sharpening my focus. It almost makes time slow down, even for one quick second, but that second is enough to mean life or death. Breathe in, breathe out slowly, and I rise above the barricade with my shotgun ready and before the two Raiders have time to react and aim for me, there's a bullet in one's brain. That gives Amelie enough time to rise up against the barricade, aim and take fire, nailing the other Raider in the gut - of course, since she favors the Plasma pistol, it melts him from the inside out and he dies screaming, tearing at his stomach with his hands. As I pick his bullets out of the leather in my armor, I feel no remorse.  
She gives me a nod and I check the room the Raiders entered from for more; none. She checks the bodies - or what remains of them - for any good loot. "Clear."  
"Ugh, me too. All they had on them was a handful of bullets and booze."  
"Well, they have a pretty nice setup in here. They must have felt comfortable leaving their things around. Come look." The one room this sewer tunnel contains has two mattresses, one table with some food and drinks sprawled on it, a refrigerator, a set of six lockers, and a safe. On another table in the corner, there's a HAM radio - they're everywhere, all over the wasteland, and they're not good for a damn thing. But sure enough, Amelie spots it first thing and stalks over to it to turn it on. She's fascinated by them; maybe one of these times something will come out of it. Maybe one of these times someone will be there.  
But not this time. "Aw. I was hoping maybe this time. But it's always neat to see these, you know? It's weird, how many things actually survived not only the apocalypse, but 200 years of Wasteland after it." She looks at me and remembers that I'm one of those things - I survived the war, the bombs, the 200 years of famine, of war-ravaged survivors, of ghoulification. Her face softens, and she comes over to me, still in the doorway, and embraces me, wrapping her arms around my waist and laying her hands flat on my upper back. I can do nothing but return the embrace, wrapping my long arms around her upper torso, squeezing her - a little too hard, because she gives out a tiny squeak. Oops. And then she lets out a soft noise of satisfaction, and slightly pulls away from me. "We should loot the place and get out of here. It still reeks of death and this face wrap isn't doing much."  
The spoils from the tunnel yield us a few thousand caps, a ton of ammo, plenty of nonperishable food (including plenty of pork and beans, to which Amelie cried "Fuck yes!") and a few pieces of Raider armor that might come in handy one day, if the situation arises where she would have to pretend to be a Raider while I follow suit as her ghoul slave.  
"Man, these Raiders had it all! I'm sure they killed and pillaged for all this stuff and I should feel bad about taking it, but I don't. It's eat or be eaten out here. Literally." She shudders and we both flash back to the time we accidentally stumbled upon a tiny town of cannibals...


	9. Memory Lane

We had been traveling for days. We were starving and exhausted and hadn't been able to find safe shelter even for one night. Amelie spotted a tiny town with a few houses still intact and thought maybe there might be some beds. One of the houses had a shed in the backyard that seemed perfect to just rest for one night, take inventory of ourselves, and move on. What we discovered inside the shed was body parts - human body parts. Now, murderers, we can deal with. We do it almost every day. But these body parts were ripped of their flesh and meat. There was a refrigerator in one corner that was filled with huge hunks of the meat. Amelie was horrified - for the first time since I'd met her, she was speechless. We attempted to sneak out of the shed, but the owner of the house caught us red-handed, so to speak.

We were approached by a balding man holding a sawed-off shotgun aimed right at Amelie's chest, point-blank. "Hey there, stranger. I've got something that I want to talk to you about. I couldn't help but notice that you were poking around in Bill's shed. So, did you find what you were looking for in there?"  
God help her, she kept her cool. Jabbing her thumb back towards the shed, she replied "I would have grabbed myself a snack while I was in there, but that'd be rude."  
The man seemed surprised. I, also, was surprised, but I kept my composure. "You're right, it sure would have. You know, you're a breath of fresh air. Every time someone discovers our little secret, we have to hear about it. It's always 'oh, how can you do this,' or 'you're such terrible people,' or 'please, not me, I have a kid in Rivet City.' Well, I have kids too! Family first, that's the way it works in Andale - from the day that the first four families decided to stay here. Hey, you're not bad, stranger. Stop on by anytime and ask Linda for one of her special meat pies. I'm Jack Smith."  
"I'm Amy. Nice to meet you, Jack." Jack turned his back to us and walked around a large, fairly intact house. It must be Bill's house, as this is Bill's shed. Once Jack is out of earshot, Amelie turned to me with a look of... horror? anger? fear? on her face.  
"Holy shit, Charon. What do we do here?"  
"I see a few options. We could take care of them, but he just mentioned there's kids involved, and I don't think either of us want to play God. We could play along and be friendly long enough to maybe find out if they're good people or not. If they only kill and eat Raiders and assholes, are they really so bad? Are they any different than us?"  
"Only in the way that they eat people, but sure."  
"Or, the third option. We leave. Leave now and never come back. Never come near here. We will do whatever you want to do, and there's no one option that is more reasonable or tactically sound than another, if I'm being honest - which I am bound to do."  
"I know." She looked around the backyard of the house of the cannibal man named Bill, blowing air from her lips to vent her frustration. We stood, her arms crossed over her chest and mine at my side but ready to get my shotgun at any moment, for almost ten minutes. I hate to admit that when she finally and suddenly spoke, it startled me. "I'm curious and morbid enough to want to talk to these people. Morally, I don't know how I feel yet. I've killed to survive. I've killed for the benefit of other people. I would kill to save you. Or even to feed you, if I had to. If they're not assholes and if they don't just eat good folks that get a little lost and aren't as cunning as I am... I guess they're fine. Does that seem fair?"  
"It does. It is most likely what I would decide if I had more ability to make my own decisions. You thought about it long enough."  
"Then let's go visit Jack Smith."

After further inspection, we discovered that there were only three intact houses in the neighborhood; Bill's, the Smith's, and another, smaller house down the road with boarded up windows and doors. The house seemed too small to house any more than one person, and it seemed obvious that the larger one would be the Smith's. Amelie knocked on the door three quick times with a shaky hand, then took a deep breath to steady her nerves. I had never seen her this rattled before - of course, this was only a few months into my employment under her, and the beginning of our friendship.  
A middle-aged woman opened the door. She looked worn, but happy; her hair was in curls and her face was full of smiles, but her pink dress was dirty and in tatters.  
"Oh, hello, dears! You must be Amy, Jack just told you about you. And who is your ghoul friend?"  
Thinking on my feet and taking the cue from Amelie's earlier introduction to Jack, I couldn't help but jump to steal the name of a ghoul I knew in another lifetime, "I am Rusty. Nice to meet you."  
"Well, I'm Linda. Come on in, you kids look like you could use a rest and a hot meal."  
"Rest sounds amazing, Linda. Do you have any water, by any chance? We're not starving, but we sure are thirsty."  
"Oh, sure, dear! Our water is slightly irradiated but it's not too, too bad, I hope that's alright. It's clean, though! Here now, two bottles for each of you." Amelie downed her first bottle in almost ten seconds, the Geiger counter on her Pip-Boy ticking away quietly. I took small sips, knowing that my body needs less to keep going than a human's, and also wanting to keep water for later. I shoved the other bottle in a side pocket of my pack as Amelie cracked open her second bottle.  
"Are you kids sure you don't want anything to eat? I just made some meat pies. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I make a mean meat pie, even with the limited spices and resources we have these days."  
"You know, Linda, a meat pie would actually be great. I'll save them for later. We're heading back out on the road soon."  
"Oh, nonsense. It's almost pitch black out there. We have a spare bed in the basement, you're welcome to stay the night. You seem like good kids. And sure enough, if you aren't, my Jack is good with a shotgun!" Linda scuttled back into the kitchen.  
I shot a look at Amelie, trying to convey the words bad idea and these people are crazy at her. She looked back at me with what appeared to be a I know, but I'm tired, and we could easily take this whole town if we had to. I sighed in resignation. Fine.  
Linda came back from the kitchen with two huge pies, one in each hand, wrapped up in cellophane. How the hell did she get cellophane 200 years after a nuclear apocalypse? I didn't want to ask. If I didn't know they were made with human meat, I would have said they looked damn delicious. Amelie takes the pies from her and carefully stacks them on top of all the junk in her pack. "Thanks, Linda. These will be so good later. So, about that bed?"  
"Yes, yes, come downstairs! Follow me. Don't mind the mess, we're in the middle of some harvesting right now." We made it down to the basement and Linda pulled on a string to illuminate the one lightbulb in the room and all we saw were bodies. Fresh bodies, rotting bodies, skeletons hanging from the ceiling, skeletons trapped in cages, bones curled around other bones - these bodies had been there a while. A long while. And they hadn't been happy to be here. Through a narrow hallway there was a tiny room. Linda found another string in the middle of this small room and pulled it to light it up. Thankfully, no blood in this one - only one double-wide bed and a bookshelf with a few weathered books on it. The bed had two pillows and a blanket on it, completing the room and making it such a contrast to the dead, macerated bodies not six feet away. "Make yourselves comfortable. Feel free to help yourselves to anything upstairs, water, food, whatever you want. If you decide to leave, feel free to take some waters, okay? Good night, kids!" And Linda disappeared down the short hallway. We waited until we heard the click of the basement door and Linda's heels clacking along the kitchen floor before we spoke.  
"Oh. My. God. These people are nuts! I was totally giving them the benefit of the doubt, but... oh my god. Those are people in that room. Not Raiders. Just normal people. Just normal people who got a little lost. Those are fresh bodies! We have to get out of here. But I'm so tired. What do we do, Charon?"  
"This room has no bodies. You and I are strong and smart enough to take care of these people if we must. We should rest for at least a few hours and leave before the sun is up. If you would like to eliminate these people, I am more than happy to comply."  
"I want to. I almost feel like we have to. But there are children, and I'm not killing children. Maybe we could take them somewhere?"  
"There is a town made up of only children. They are completely self-sufficient and, though they are small, they are a thriving community. I don't know where it is, but I know it is real, and when we find it we could take them there."  
"Then for now... we rest. A few hours, at least. I feel like I'm dead on my feet. We'll leave at sunrise and until we find that town, we'll leave everyone here... intact."

We slept for a few hours, each of us keeping one hand on our guns until the sun broke through one tiny window in the room. Amelie took the liberty of stealing a few of the books in the lone bookshelf - many of the books were so worn you couldn't make out the covers, but after investigating them, she stuffed them in her pack anyway. Those books now sit on our bookshelf in our Megaton house. We snuck upstairs, I kept watch while Amelie raided their refrigerator of everything that wasn't meat - water bottles, some chems, some Nuka Colas, shoving what she could into her pack and mine. We snuck out of the house immediately after, finally having the energy and hydration to make it back home to Megaton.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: Warning for one forcible kiss in this chapter and then some small conversation about it right after, all contained between the *** separators. You can avoid that section entirely if you need to, and infer from the context of the later paragraphs what's going on!)

"Anyway, let's lug all this stuff back home. I wanna sort out the goods, maybe rest for the night, and then I want to head out tomorrow morning. I heard on the radio that there's some sort of junkyard or scrapyard up north. I figure, if anyone's living there and they're of the murder-y sort, we can take them." Amelie pauses for a moment to climb the ladder back to the dusty earth. "And if no one is there, we can scavenge for cool stuff. I know it's silly, but I kind of want to see if I can build some sort of transportation. Maybe a bicycle or two, and we can learn to ride them together. Walking everywhere is exhausting sometimes. Maybe get it motorized by using the technology they built cars with and whatever scraps I can find. I keep looking for books on science and maybe inventing, but it's hard out here to find any books intact at all, let alone specific types."  
"I know you hate your father for leaving you in the Vault, and for thinking you would be safe and happy there on your own. But you are so much like him, based on the things you and other people have said about him. He must be a very intelligent man to have raised such a smart daughter."  
"I don't hate him. Anymore. I'm still angry, that's all. But I love him, and I miss him so much, and I wish we knew where the hell he went after he left the Jefferson. But I don't hate him. He's my dad, you know? You can't hate your dad."  
"Sure. How about when we get back to Megaton, I will compile all of the information I can remember from before the War about cars and how they worked? Maybe that would help you rebuild some transportation. If it can be done, you are the one who can do it."  
She reaches the distance between us and takes my hand in hers, intertwining her fingers between mine. "Charon, that would be amazing. Thank you."

*******

We spend two exhausted days in Megaton gathering ourselves again and running our usual errands - visit Walter, visit Moira, pay Moriarty. We discussed the Jenny Stahl situation with Moira and she was more than happy to accommodate our needs in exchange for "a few favors." She didn't tell us what the favors were, but I can't imagine they're anything good.  
Amelie decides on the second day, when we wake up tangled around each other in the late morning, sweat glistening on both our faces, that we'll traverse to the scrapyard she had heard about. Knowing that most people in Megaton hadn't left Megaton for far too long, she thought to ask Jericho if he had any idea where exactly it might be - after all, he used to be a Raider, and he used to roam the Wastes. Thankfully, we find him in Moriarty's bar, and not at The Brass Lantern, where he usually is.  
"Hey, Jericho."  
"Kid." He takes a long swig of his drink - whiskey and Nuka Cola, it smells like.  
"I wanna ask you something. Do you know anything about a scrapyard up north?"  
"That depends. What do I get in exchange for this information? Ya gonna kiss me?"  
"Don't test my patience. I'll give you 100 caps if you give me a vague direction to go in, and 100 more when we come back if you weren't lying."  
"Kiss now, no payment later." He peers around the room, then lowers his voice to a gravelly whisper, leaning in towards Amelie. "I know what you two do with your money. I hate that Moriarty fucker as much as anybody else, and it ain't right to keep slaves like he does." Jericho flashes me a look. Strange. I always thought he hated me - at least, hated ghouls. "One kiss, kid. All business. I haven't been with anyone but Nova in years, and she don't let anybody kiss her. I just wanna remember what it's like to kiss some soft lips, alright? Look," he grabs her Pip-Boy and tries to access the map. Amelie navigates the menus and switches and lands on the huge map of the Capital Wasteland. Jericho taps and scrolls on the map a few times and shoves her arm back at her. "There. The scrapyard's a few miles northeast of here."  
"Oh, it's just south of Minefield! I know where that is. Thanks, Jericho." Amelie leans over and kisses Jericho on the cheek once, a quick peck to satisfy him. Before she can pull away, he puts his hand on the back of her head, winding his hand in her hair, and pulls her in for deeper kiss. I have my shotgun out and aimed for his groin before his tongue can even make contact with hers. I hear her gasp, and they break apart after a few seconds - a few seconds too long. I dare to blink. Amelie's cheeks are flushed and there's anger in her eyes. "Jericho. If you ever do that again, I'll kill you myself."  
"Sorry, kid. Got ahead of myself. You're a good kisser."  
"Ugh. Just don't do it again. Asshole. Let's go, Charon, before Gob ends up with blood all over his nice, clean bar."

We're ten miles away from Megaton, walking in total silence until she finally bursts out with "I just can't believe he thought assaulting my lips would be appropriate behavior! I know he used to be a Raider, but god damn. Who does he think he is?"  
"He thinks he is the king of Megaton because he once traveled the Wastes and pillaged and killed for money. That he can get away with whatever he wants because of who he used to be."  
"Everyone has to settle down sometime. Ugh. Asshole."  
"Yes, he is."

*******

"Here's a question for all you faithful listeners. Have you guys or gals ever seen... a tree? No, no, no, not those shriveled black things. I'm talkin' real trees! Brown bark, green leaves! Photosynthesis, all that good stuff. Now what if I, the all-powerful Three Dog, bow-wow-wow, were to tell you that somewhere, right here in the Capital Wasteland, is a place with lots of trees? A veritable oasis of green, in that depressing sea of brown. Look, it was years ago, and I may have been experimenting with Jet at the time, but I'm telling you, it's out there. Until next time, this is Three-Dog!"  
We are only a handful of miles away from the spot on the map that Jericho marked as the scrapyard when Amelie stops after this radio broadcast. We usually tune it out, as I think Three-Dog is an ass, and Amelie still hasn't forgiven him for sending her on a dead man's errand to find out one measly tidbit of information on her father all those months ago. In fact, we usually don't have the radio on at all, as any enemy nearby would obviously pick out the noise and pinpoint our location, catching us off-guard. Today, she thought it a good idea, as if maybe the music from my old days would cheer her up and calm her down. She hurriedly switches off the radio and flips through her Pip-Boy menus.  
"What's wrong?"  
"A few months ago when I was out on my own because your arm was sprained and needed to heal, remember that? I came across a dead Wastelander, probably killed by a Yao Guai or something. She had a note on her body and I picked it up because, well, you know me and notes. It finally makes sense now."  
"The note makes sense?"  
"'A veritable oasis of green'. The note," she pulls it up on the Pip-Boy and shows me the screen, "has a crude little map to the North. Its destination is called Oasis. I never thought much about it, that maybe I'd get there one day and see what's there, since it was obviously important to this woman. But I had a lot of shit going on, so I didn't really care too much. But the way Three Dog phrased it... this has to be it. It's just North of the scrapyard. We have to go. I've never seen a tree in real life, Charon. I've never seen plants that weren't crispy and dead. And the fake plastic ones in Tenpenny Tower don't count."  
"We will go, then, if you feel this strongly about it. I haven't seen a live tree myself in probably... a hundred years. It would be nice to experience it again. To breathe fresh oxygen again, not this rust, the earthy air that reeks of soil and death and plague."  
"And you've never heard of this place?"  
"I've been sent on many strange excursions in my time, but never that far North."  
"Hm."  
"Is it still a part of the plan to go to the scrapyard?"  
"Not yet. Oasis first. Then the scrapyard. That way we don't have to carry things quite as far if we find anything cool to lug home."  
"To Oasis, then." And my heart quivers with the way she says home.


	11. Chapter 11

Although Oasis is marked on the map in a precise spot, when we arrive there, it's just a huge alcove of rocks. Amelie's shoulders slump when it appears there is no Oasis, at least, not here.

"Let's walk around it. Maybe these rocks are a decoy, so anyone would assume it's just a pile of junk and leave. Wouldn't you do that if you wanted to keep your town safe?"

"I've done worse to keep my town safe. Let's go left, I guess."

About a quarter mile walk around the large cliff-face looking pile of rocks, we find an opening in the rock face - a path? Amelie gives me a look, and we both steady our hold on our weapons. Far down the dirt path surrounded by rock, two people, a man and a woman, dressed in what looks like old potato sacks bear their own weapons. The man raises one hand, palm to us and fingers splayed - the universal sign for "stop". We stop, loosening our hold on our guns - a show of peace. The man comes forward, staring all the way at Amelie.

"Outsider! You have arrived! Please, come closer... I have something of the utmost urgency to speak to you about! Do hurry, He doesn't like to be kept waiting!" I look at Amelie, and she looks at me. He? "I'm so glad you're here. It's been a while since anyone's visited us, and He's been waiting for someone like yourself to arrive. If you wouldn't mind following me, I'll bring you right to Him."

"Sure. Lead on."

"Excellent! Please, follow me. All will be explained soon." Not soon enough. I'm suspicious, gun still drawn, but curiosity kills. We follow him through tall wooden doors into a forest. My god, the trees. The leaves! The grass, so much grass everywhere. A wooden gazebo in the middle of a rounded space cleared of tree life, with a small basin in the center of it. The old man leads us to the gazebo, though he doesn't spare a glance at me - looking only at Amelie, as if he were a blind man finding sight for the first time, and she was the sun.

"I am Tree Father Birch. You have no idea how overjoyed I am to see you! Normally, Outsiders are forbidden inside Oasis, but He has made an exception. To meet Him, you must undergo the Ceremony of Purification. Once that's complete, you'll be able to speak to Him. Whenever you're ready, we may begin."

"Him? Ceremony? What does this ceremony involve?"

"It's simple, really. You drink the sap from the basin here in the Pavilion. The sap will purify your mind and body of anything harmful that could possibly hurt Him. I assure you, nothing harmful will happen to you."

Amelie looks at the "sap" in the basin. It sure looks like tree sap, though it's been two centuries since I've seen any. Thick and sticky. I reach over to touch it, to test it with my own hand and another strange tree person scolds me from afar. Amelie takes me out of earshot of these wacky people. "I'm gonna do it. My curiosity is peaked. You know what to do in case that stuff kills me, right?"

"Of course. I don't like it, but I don't have to like it."

"See you on the other side. Tree Father Birch? I'm ready to start the ceremony."

"Very good! Take your place in front of the basin, and let's begin."

Quickly, all of the other tree folk dressed in their strange potato sack garb circle around us, around the basin. I take a step back, exiting the circle, needing my peripheral vision clear in case this goes haywire. With everyone in place, Tree Father Birch motions to Amelie that she should drink from the basin. She steels herself, cups her hands in it, and takes a sip. She tries to mask the disgust on her face, with no luck. Immediately, I see her eyes lose focus, her muscles relax, and her face flush with pink. She grips the side of the basin for balance. Every instinct in me screams to scoop her up and run from this strange place, but somehow, at the same time, I know she is in no danger. One by one, these strange tree people all chant something, so weird I would never be able to catch it all.

"Soon, you will pass peacefully into sleep, outsider. And when you awake, you will witness His glory firsthand." Tree Father Birch steps forward to catch her before she falls, unconscious. He lays her down on the wooden ground gently, then turns to me for the first time. "You will carry her through those doors," he points behind me, "and wait for her to come to. She will know what to do then. She will sleep for around one hour."

I carry her through the large wooden doors behind me into a grove. It's beautiful; green trees as far as the eye can see, a bed of grass covering the ground instead of dirt and sand. Pools of beautiful, clear blue water puddle sporadically around the place. If it was better protected on all sides, I would want to live right here in this grove for the rest of my unending life. I find a particularly soft-looking bed of grass and lay Amelie down on it, sitting next to her head leaning my back up against a tree. It's quite pleasant in here. It smells fresh, like life, like sweetness. Not like death and bitterness and dust like most places in the Wastes. I find an old book in Amelie's pack that I think might be one of the old Sherlock Holmes novels, though the first few pages are so worn it's hard to tell; a few snack cakes, a bottle of water, and I settle in for my hour of waiting.

Just as the detective and the doctor are in the midst of solving their mystery, Amelie wakes up suddenly with a snort. She rubs her eyes and glances around, panicking when she realizes she has no idea where she is, and that she can't see me.

"Amelie, I'm here," I gently put my hand on her shoulder. She turns to look back at me, bleary-eyed and uncomprehending for a moment before realizing she's safe. Her face relaxes, and she reaches up to take my hand and hold it in both of hers, then pressing it to the right side of her face. I rub her cheek gently with my thumb, but her eyes snap open, suddenly alert, and she faces the center of this rotunda of trees and life, staring right at the largest tree I've ever seen.

"I know what I have to do. I don't know how. It was like... like a weird dream, I guess. I saw things. I know what I have to do. I'm going to go talk to that tree." She stands and marches over to the tree, a good fifty paces away.

"Um. Amelie?" But she's too far now. And too determined. "Okay. You go talk to the tree. Give it what-for." Sure enough, the other side of the tree must have something to say, because she has a full conversation with it. I start to stand to gather up our things, packing away my book and the trash from my snack when she comes back to me.

"Don't bother with that stuff. I have to do something for Harold. It'll be quick, but I need you to stay here. Harold has nothing against you, he just doesn't like strangers in his tunnels and I already took the sap so I'm all cleansed and, well, whatever. Keep reading your book. I'll be back soon, okay?" She starts to walk away and I catch her by the hand.

"Do you want to perhaps tell me what you're up to? Or who Harold is?" Please, God, don't let Harold be the tree.

"Oh, Harold is the tree over there." Of course. "He's very nice, and he asked me to do him a favor. He's lived a long and miserable life, and he wants me to end it. It's not like killing, it's like... mercy. His heart is down in some tunnels underneath us, underneath all of Oasis. It's just something I have to do. I'll be safe, okay? I have stealth boys in my pocket in case there's anything down there."

"Okay. Be safe. Please. I lo... I want you to come back to me in one piece." I kiss her hand, and she kisses mine back. She walks away from me, leaving through the large, double doors we initially came from. I settle down in my spot to continue reading my book, lost in the thought of how close I came to saying that godforsaken L word. I know how I feel. But I can't get myself to say it. What am I afraid of? I don't even know what the contract could cause in me if I admit my feelings toward... well, anyone, regardless of if they are the contract holder or not. Friendship, romance, sex... it's all mostly foreign to me because I am terrified of the outcome. Amelie has helped me navigate friendship. But what happens if I can't take it anymore? When I have to take her in my arms and love her once and for all? I'm almost too afraid to find out.

I wait for Amelie for slightly less than an hour, telling only by the movement of the sun, lost in my book. She trudges back into the woodsy rotunda looking sad, almost defeated. Disappointed, maybe. She makes a beeline for me, and I stand to greet her with my arms wrapped around her, rubbing small circles on her back with my thumb. She lays her head on my chest, inches under my collarbone, arms around my waist.

"What happened?"

"I couldn't do it. Come with me to talk to Harold, you'll understand."

To my surprise, Harold is actually... a humanoid tree. A tree with a face. And a voice. 200 years on this post-apocalyptic planet, seeing the things I've seen, and yet I'm surprised.

"Hi, Harold."

"Amelie," Harold breathes in a low, grumbling voice, "You couldn't do it. I know what you did. I understand."

"I'm sorry. I wanted to help you, I swear. But Leaf Mother Laurel gave me a bottle and said that it would help your plants grow, and spread across the Wasteland. I'm so sorry, Harold. I had to do what's best for everyone."

"I know. At least things," He breathes a long, rattling breath, "aren't all bad. I've been around 200 years. What's 200 more?"

Amelie smiles at him. "Bye, Harold. We'll come back and visit one day, I promise."

"Please, don't be strangers. It's nice to be visited by... people who aren't crazy."

We decided to make a picnic a few meters behind Harold, as not to disturb him, but so we could appreciate the plantlife. Soft grass, softer than anything Amelie had seen in her whole life, most likely. She spent a good ten minutes sitting on the ground, running her hands over the beds, over and over again.

"I wish I had a camera so I could capture this moment forever. You look so happy."

"I just never thought I would see anything like this in real life. Not in my lifetime. I was always sure humanity would get back to this point eventually, even if my dad's whole Project Purity thing doesn't work out and even if no one had ever stepped in with Harold's heart. But to see it, to see all this... God. Maybe we really are a little closer now than we were before. And I can't believe it. I can't believe how fresh and clean the air is here."

"It is definitely a strange sensation in my gravelly old lungs." Amelie scoots over to me and I lay my arm around her shoulders, using my other hand to pull her face to my chest. "I like it here."

And with a happy sigh, "Me too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: I had a strangely tough time writing this chapter, even though from the beginning I've wanted them to go to Oasis and for Charon to get in touch with his potential feelings - I guess just feeling like I have to stay faithful to the dialogue and that questline is a little hindering for me. I might rewrite this chapter later. I'm sorry if it feels super weird to read. But thank you so much for reading this far! :3)


	12. Chapter 12

The scrapyard, a ten mile walk from Oasis, is a junk yard disaster. Scrapped out cars everywhere, filth and rust, old shacks that we find contain nothing once Amelie cracks their locks. A rusty box hidden in a corner of a corner contains some cool magazines that Amelie stuffs in my pack, the emptier pack. "I'll read these later," she says.

Off in the distance, I hear a dog barking and chants of "Fuck you, dog! You're dead shit!" Amelie hears it too, because her head turns in the same direction mine does. She rolls her eyes. "Fucking raiders. Come on." She tosses a metal J-shaped pipe off the path between the car destruction and we head off to find the source of the shouting.

And she was right - three raiders team up against a dog. A dog who seems to be almost impervious to bullets? I'll question that after we deal with the raiders trying to murder it. It doesn't look like any of the other dogs in the wasteland - it's not haggard, or dirty, or foaming at the mouth like most wild dogs. The dog takes a huge chunk out of one raider's arm while dodging another's makeshift nailboard. This dog has some skills, that's for sure.

In a split second, Amelie has her gun trained on a head, and it's gone; turned into nothing but a pile of ash. I take out another with a few shotgun shells to the chest, and the dog rips the jugular out of the third. I cautiously approach the bodies to find any good loot they may have had, trying to keep my distance from the dog, but he just... patiently sits down and looks right at me.

Then his tongue lolls out of his mouth and he starts wagging his tail.

Amelie gives me her "I'll check this one out" look, and approaches the dog gently with one arm extended, palm towards him. "Hi, buddy. Oh, you're a cutie, aren't you? Can I pet you? Is that okay?" The dog sniffs her hand and brushes his large head against her open hand - a clear invitation. She rubs his head, his back and his neck and he leans right into it. Poor thing must have been on his own for a while. "Oh!" She pulls something worn and red loose from the fur on his neck - a collar.

"Hey, Charon, this collar says his name is Dogmeat! That's cute."

Dogmeat? That name sounds familiar... but one I probably haven't heard of in centuries. Must just be a popular dog name these days.

"Is it okay if he comes with us? Obviously he has no owner, they'd never leave him alone like this if they cared at all." She turns back to the dog. "You know, I think you're the first dog I've met that didn't try to eat me. What do you like, huh? Do you like Cram? You want some Cram? Are you thirsty?" My God, she's borderline baby talking this dog. She finds a can of Cram in her bag, cracks it open and dumps the cube-shaped meat lump on the ground. The dog eats like he hasn't in weeks. Good. Neither of us like Cram.

I find the bodies are chock-full of good loot - a handful of random types of ammo, a combat-grade knife, and some choice pieces of armor that I can use to repair mine and Amelie's. I approach Amelie and the dog the same way she approached him; arm outstretched. I hope it came off as respect and curiosity and not fear. Dogs can smell fear.

But to my surprise, Dogmeat nuzzles my hand with his head. I see now, close up as he stares right into my eyes, that his own are two different colors. How unique. "I like him. If you would like to keep him, I would not complain. He is... sweet." I ruffle the hair behind his ears.

"Yes! Do you wanna come with us, boy?" He barks once in response. "Well, I guess so. Come on, boy. Let's go fuck shit up."


	13. Chapter 13

"Did I ever tell you about the time I almost blew up my entire squad?" We walk in satisfied silence for miles, pipes and sheets of metal strapped to our backs and a dog in between us, but I decide to break the silence. Amelie wants to know more about the past? I have 230 years of past behind me to tell.

"No, you haven't. Do tell."

"We were all fresh recruits. The military had finished accepting volunteers and were moving on to begin drafting, because people just stopped. I was a volunteer. Most of my squad were.

We weren't two months into training before we were thrown into real situations. We were still being trained, and if we were smart, our lives weren't in any danger. But we were fresh recruits, most of us in our early twenties. We had a lot to learn.

Remember Minefield, how difficult it was to navigate?" I look over at Amelie, and she nods, remembering vividly how she almost lost every limb doing that fucking favor for Moira. "It was like Minefield, but worse. Mostly because of the sheer volume of mines, but also because there were so many of us that one was bound to trigger a mine and risk all our lives or limbs.

Of course, I nearly did. It was the dead of night and we had been awake for a few straight days. That was part of the training, too - learning how to keep going even after your body gives up. I stepped on a mine and not a second too late did I realize it. If I had moved an inch, I would have lost both legs, or my life, and probably taken out a few of my squadmates. As soon as I heard the click, I stopped and ordered everyone to get away. That was one of the last orders I ever made, and I wasn't even qualified to make it then. My best friend, Grady... he stayed with me. He wouldn't leave. I knew I could disarm the mine, and if I couldn't, I didn't want to take anyone else with me. But he stayed. He wouldn't want to live without me anyway, he said." I can hear the sadness in my voice as these words come out for the first time in... decades. I try to push it away. The story, this memory deserves to be finished.

He ended up losing his left foot that night, although it was because of a slip-and-fall slice that turned into an infection, and not even because of a mine. The military got a new foot built for him, though. They couldn't bear to lose a soldier like him.

After that mistake I nearly made, that's when I was sent to the Institute for the training that turned me into the man you see now. Not the ghoul, but the slave." I stop dead in my tracks, remembering that Amelie hates the word, hates any use of it referring to me, and how she bristles at the mention of the Institute and what they did to me. "Sorry. Just... they made me the way I am now because of that day. I guess I can't regret a single bit of it, because everything in my life has led me to you."

She reaches out to me with sad eyes and takes my hand. "What ever happened to Grady?"

"He..." Wow. It's harder to talk about him than I thought. I swallow hard. "He ended up on the frontlines at Alaska and he never came back. I never heard from him after the day he had surgery to replace his foot. Some of the last words he said to me were about how he'd never want to live if he didn't have me." I give her hand a gentle squeeze, then chuckle, remembering something else. "Actually, I believe his last words to me were 'I can't believe you step on a fucking mine and I end up losing a foot! This is bullshit!' But we laughed about it, I left his hospital room, and the next morning I was taken away, never to see him or my family ever again."

"I'm so sorry, Charon."

"Don't be, Amelie. Life happens. Strangely, sure, but it happens. And even stranger, I somehow managed to find someone else to love in this Wasteland, too."

Wait.

Fuck.


	14. Chapter 14

Amelie stops, and our hands still intertwined means I stop too. She releases my hand and takes a few steps forward, turning to face me.

"You love me?"

"I..." Fuck it. I'm in too deep now. "I do. Look at you. You're so smart, you're funny, you're sweet as pie to every ghoul you meet. You can more than hold your own in a fight - you don't even need me. But mostly you treat me like I'm a person, as if I have a heart that matters. No one since Grady has done that for me. You make me feel like I matter. So yes, I love you, Amelie. And I understand if you have a problem with that and you need to... do what you need to do. Kill me, order me away, give my contract to someone else if my feelings are going to complicate what we have."

She bores into my eyes for a full minute, though it feels like an eternity - green eyes against milky blue, forever. I open my mouth to say - something, I'm not sure what, when she closes the distance between us and kisses me.

And suddenly she's the world, the universe, and every star that's ever existed in it imploding and exploding all at once. She is fireworks, ice cubes on a hot day, children laughing. She is everything good and dangerous in the world and somehow I find my hands winding themselves in her hair, her long, beautiful brown hair as I keep her face to mine. I haven't kissed, really kissed in... God knows how long. But it's like the old saying about bikes - you never forget.

Her arms are behind my head, pulling me down to her. I rest a hand on the side of her face gently, and she does the same to me, brushing against my bare muscle and scar tissue and not caring, not even noticing. She's the first to break away, and I realize both of us have forgotten how to breathe.

"It's hard for me to have feelings deeper than happiness, and hunger, and sadness and lust because of all the craziness of my life. I don't know if what I do is enough, or if it ever will be, but dammit, Charon, you make me feel. You make me want to feel. And for all it's worth, for all of me, I love you too."

It's me that closes the gap this time. A quick kiss, but my tongue gently teases her bottom lip... because, after all, I'm a man in love and I can't control every urge.

"You are enough. Just you. Just you, and me, and... our dog."

We arrive home to Megaton hand-in-hand, as we usually did before, but now it means something different. We spent much of the long, grueling walk home in comfortable silence, but always touching - hands, arms. It's dark, so we just head home instead of running our usual route when we get back from a trek. We'll deal with it tomorrow. We've had a long few days.

I've been afraid to discuss what these newly expressed feelings mean - what this might do to my contract, as I've never loved, or even cared about, an employer before and there's no clause in it anywhere. What it means to her - she says she has never loved before, and never been with another person... intimately. How people would treat us if they find out - after all, ghouls are worth less than dirt to most people in the Wastes.

I've been afraid to discuss it, because a part of me doesn't want her or myself to realize it's a mistake. Now that it's out and the truth is known, I am sure I would burn forever if I could no longer love her.

We undress to our bedclothes - me in a pair of cloth pants cut to be mid-thigh length, and her in underpants and a tank top, as always - and climb into bed. She shakes nervously and curls up on my chest, running a twitchy hand up and down my sternum, finding my collarbones, tracing circles on my skin. Or, well, what's left of it. I can't help but let out a groan, having not been touched like this in so long, and she kisses my chest once, twice, and a third time before looking up at me, meeting my eyes. Her breath is uneven as she closes the distance again and we kiss.

It feels as good, as right as it did the first time. Maybe even better, as the element of surprise isn't clouding the experience. But then she motions to slide on top of me, and I have to stop her.

"Why'd you stop me?"

"You are nervous. I don't want to do anything you're not comfortable with. I... I know you've never done this before." It sounds harsher than I intend, so I try to gently rub up and down her forearm as she slowly moves her leg off my lower torso.

"I just... I wanted to do something nice for you. Do you not want me?"

"If you would turn your attention a few inches south of where your leg was, you will see that I very much do. But where you have never been in this position before, and where we are both new at this... I would think it best if we take it slow. For both of our sakes."

She gives me a quick, sad smile before kissing me once more. "Okay. Slow." She looks down at the... ahem, situation, she created, and her eyes widen. If I could only blush. "Um. For my own sake. How...?"

"We will cross that bridge when we get to it. I assure you, eventually it will fit."

"Dear God."

I can't help but smirk as I kiss her forehead. "I love you, Amelie Lynn. Go to sleep."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: Wink wink.)


	15. Chapter 15

Some time in the late morning, I untangle myself from Amelie's limbs sprawled out on me. For such a beautiful person, she sure sleeps like a tranquilized Yao Guai. I gently climb over her, careful not to disturb her and wake her up. She needs the sleep. Just as I'm leaving the room to wash up in the bathroom I hear her blearily mumble "No, Dad... Not now, not now", and she fitfully turns her head side to side, breathing heavily. I move to her, kneeling on the floor by the bedside, taking her hand in one of mine and gently stroking her face with the other.

"Amelie, wake up. You're okay. Wake up." Her eyes flicker open and wildly search the ceiling and then the room as it all comes into focus and she shifts from deep, scared sleep to wakefulness. Her eyes find my face and she leans her face into my hand, and her breathing slows and calms.

"Charon," she sighs.

"Bad dream?"

She nods and swallows hard, mouth dry. "We found my dad, and he kept trying to get away from us. From me. And we ended up at the Jefferson again to start up Project Purity, and he kept sending me on these mindless tasks when all I wanted was to talk to him, to just be with him and I had to do all this stupid shit. But it was one of those weird dreams where you keep trying to do something and it's impossible for some reason, so I kept not being able to do the things he wanted me to do. It doesn't really sound that bad now that I'm awake, but..." She shudders and closes her eyes, seeming close to tears. "It sure seemed like a nightmare when it was happening."

"You're okay now. And when we find him, I will make sure that doesn't happen. Okay?"

"Are you implying you're going to strong-arm my dad?" A hint of a sleepy smirk plays on her lips.

"If I must. Anything to keep you happy." I kiss her good-morning, kiss her nightmares away. It feels natural and right like nothing ever has before. Like a reflex I forgot I had for 200 years. Like we should have been doing it every day for the last nine months. 

"What would you like to do today?"

"Let's stay in town. We have some errands to run, but not really much going on elsewhere we need to take care of, so I just think we all need a day of rest. Oh! I almost forgot about Dogmeat. We sorta have a dog now, don't we?"

I smirk. "We do. I'm going to get ready."

"Then I'll take care of the dog."

I head to the bathroom, inconveniently placed right next to our bedroom, to wash up - I'm covered in Wasteland sand and sweat. I run both taps on the stained bathtub, always hoping for something other than cold to come out and always disappointed. I'll have to ask Walter how we can solve that problem for good for the town; traveling all the way to Tenpenny Tower for one hot shower isn't ideal, and everyone else here deserves hot water, too. As soon as I take off my shorts and expose myself to the room, Amelie knocks twice and immediately comes in. Her eyes move faster than my hands and I know she saw the full extent of my ghoulhood before I could cover myself with both hands.

"Oh! I'm sorry. For some reason I didn't think you'd take a bath, I thought you'd just wash up in the sink. I'm sorry, but also not sorry at all." Sly girl has the biggest, smuggest grin on her face as she hangs in the doorway. "I need to take Dogmeat outside the Wall so he can, y'know, go to the bathroom out there and not all over Simms' town. Do you want me to wait for you?"

"No, you don't have to. Just be safe, please. Armor and weapon."

"I know, I know." And she crosses to me, putting one hand on my bare chest and one on the back of my head and pulls me in for a deep kiss. Our tongues gently touch and she shivers and moans ever so slightly, just enough to rev the engine she tried to start last night. Despite my best efforts to keep it covered with my hands, it becomes obvious to her when it escapes my grasp and bumps against her hip. She gasps and breaks away with a look in her eye that, until now, was foreign to me. "Have a nice bath," and she winks and stalks out of the room, shutting the door solidly behind her.

Clever minx. It's probably best to take care of business myself while I have the chance - this isn't the first time I've been hard in the nine months I've been under Amelie's employment, but it is the first time I'm free enough to deal with it. I climb into my moderately chilly bath, dunk under the water to wash away the Wasteland grime, and pleasure myself with only thoughts of Amelie - her deep brown hair, her leaf-green eyes, our declarations of love, her kissing my chest and running her hands over my ruined body, not caring and never being disgusted by me. The memory of her nipples poking through her shirt on a chilly night. Her bending over to stretch in nothing but a tank top and underwear, giving me a full view of her ass. God, I love her. She loves me, and I love her.

And that's enough to send me over the edge.


	16. Chapter 16

As I hop out of the bathtub, I hear Amelie and Dogmeat come back to the house and she babytalks him again.

"Who's a good boy? You want Cram? You want water? You want a treat for being such a good boy?" And he barks in response. I can't help but chuckle. "Wadsworth, could you make some water, please? As much as you can. I want to stock up. And finally give the dog pure water. As it is, I think I need to hide some RadAway in his food just in case."

"Certainly, madam." And even through one floor of metal I hear the subtle whir of his internal parts moving to make purified water for her. Amazing. If only humans had used the technology they built Mr. Handy and Gutsy's with to save the world instead of end it.

I quickly towel off, heading to the bedroom to throw clothes on, deciding on my usual - black shirt, black pants. Comfortable enough. I'm eager to rejoin my lady, and I bound downstairs to greet her.

She's in the kitchen, mashing a dip in the cube-shaped Cram on a plate and reaching for a RadAway bag. I wrap my arms around her, trying to be... sweet, I think, but my height turns it into me very awkwardly nudging her breasts, getting in her way, and nearly knocking the dog's food onto the floor. Yet she still leans into me, sighing in a pleased way.

"Did you have a nice bath?"

"I did. It could have been a bit warmer, but I was thinking we could tackle that problem later."

"Oh, are you thinking I should join you next time?"

She will be the end of me. I growl into her neck and kiss her. "Yes. But to ruin the mood, I was also thinking I should talk to Walter about getting heated water for the town somehow. I may be able to remember a thing or two about water heaters, knowledge that most people these days just wouldn't have access to."

"Charon, that's so sweet of you. I know I always drag us back here, and mostly because it's nice to have a place to sleep that I don't have to shell out caps for, but I think I care about most of the people here. It's... I didn't know you did too."

"We are very fortunate to have a house. Many people here don't. Most don't even have their own bathroom. The least I could ever do is give them hot water, if it can be done. These people are good to us." She wraps her arms around mine and, oddly, I notice we're slightly swaying in our tiny kitchen, though I don't know why or how it started. I release her after a nippy kiss to her neck to let her continue feeding the dog - our dog, and also to rummage and find some food for the humans (well, ghoul and human).

She pours half the contents of the RadAway bag into the dip she made in the Cram, then mixes and mashes it all up together. "Hopefully he doesn't notice," she says out of the corner of her mouth as she puts the dish of food in the corner on the opposite side of the room for Dogmeat. He seems none the wiser, because he chows right down on it.

She looks at the remains of the RadAway bag, contemplating something. Then she shrugs and downs the rest herself. I have to raise an eyebrow - she hates the taste. "I accidentally stepped in a gross puddle when I took him out and my Pip-Boy went nuts. I figured it can't hurt. I have nothing against becoming a ghoul, but I might not get so lucky." I must have a sad or disgruntled look on my face, because hers drops and she comes to me immediately, curling herself into my chest and wrapping her arms around me. "I don't know what that face is for, but I'm sorry if I said something stupid."

"No, Amelie. I... I don't understand how you could look at me and think that becoming this is luck."

"Compared to the alternative, which is death?"

"Live for 200 years and survive a nuclear apocalypse, and you will feel differently. I haven't looked at my own face in so long because I disgust myself. I don't know or understand why you would want to become... this. Like me."

"Do you not see how beautiful you are, you silly man? So you have some skin missing. Big deal. I can see your muscles. I can see them move when you move. It's very cool. And your face... it's perfect. There's nothing about you or your body that I don't like. Plus, I mean, you've survived 200 years of battles and fights and bombs and gunfire and age and you're still here. It stands to reason that ghouls don't age, most likely, right? And they live forever? To live forever, and have you forever, for the rest of my life as far as that goes on, that seems like a damn good deal to me."

Panic strikes as I realize she's right - one day, she will die. And unless I am killed, I will not - most likely. There will be a day in the future, far off? Close by? Where I will have to be without her. And I don't know if I could ever handle that. I try not to show it on my face because this conversation is emotionally harrowing enough. I lean down and kiss her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her ears, her mouth as she giggles each time.

And I look into her eyes, maybe even into her soul, baring my own, "I love you. With all of me. Everything I ever was, am, have been, will be, I am yours until we both die of old age." And I smirk, lightening the mood. I can't ruin such a tranquil day even more than I have.


	17. Chapter 17

"Perhaps it would be a good idea for me to train you to use all of your senses in a fight. You are very skilled with your weapons, your words, and your fists, yes, but it would be beneficial for you to know how to use the rest of your body to protect yourself." We stand in the kitchen eating steaks with our hands when I decide to bring this up. Amelie is certainly the 'you can plead your case to me, but you will most likely die soon' type, which has gotten her this far, but I know she needs to know more.

"Are you sure we need to spend time training me for that? You know how quickly I pick things up."

After a moment of contemplation, I put my own plate down, take hers out of her hand and place it on the counter she leans on. Then I cover her eyes with my hands.

"Charon, wh-?"

"Tell me what's in this room."

"What?"

"Everything that's in this room. What's in here?"

"Oh, you're clever. Proving your own point, are you? Fine. Are we including the sink, counter and fridge?"

"They're obvious, but I'll count them because you said them. So, go. Everything in this room."

"On the shelves, of which there are two sets of four shelves, have..." I feel her eyebrows scrunch together under my hands in her thoughts, "three boxes of InstaMash, ten cans of Cram, a ton of bottled water, the big pot and... fuck! Fine, you're right, I need some training." I pull my hands from her eyes and put my arms around her instead. She leans her head into my chest.

"You did good. But, yes, you need training. You need to be able to enter a room and know how many people, animals, weapons are in it without looking. Without thinking. Using your ears, your nose, sensing it."

"That seems like a pain in the ass. I only knew what I just listed off because I just did some inventory so I'd know how much food we have for the dog. But, to appease you, o wise one, we'll train. Okay?" She kisses me. It's comfortable, natural, like we've been doing it every day for years.

"That is all I ask," and I press a kiss into her temple.

She detaches herself from me and continues eating her steak. With a full mouth, she asks, "So should we go see Walter today? Ask about the hot water?"

I pick up my own plate and continue my meal. "I think we should. Unless you have better plans for the day. In a perfect world, I would ask any of the ghouls in Underworld if they know anything. After all, most of them have been around since before the War, too. Someone else is likely to remember more than I do."

"Well, remember what you can, and we'll make a day trip to Underworld sometime and see what else we can find out."

"Sounds good to me."

***

Walter grumbles in the way that he does, not actually confirming or denying that he knows anything about setting up a water heater for the town. He just walked back to his office and came out with two toolboxes in tow, handing one each to Amelie and I.

"Here's my tools. I don't have anything around to do what you want, but if you two want to figure it out, just use my tools. Give 'em back when you're done."

"Thank you, Walter. We'll keep you posted," Amelie says with a hint of confusion and annoyance. Not enough for Walter to detect. We exit the water plant before we look in the toolboxes - hammers, screws, nails, bolts, nuts, screwdrivers. Anything you'd ever need to fix anything, it's in these toolboxes. "Holy tools. I can fix everything broken around the house with all these!"

"I suppose hot water will have to wait until we visit Underworld. I don't remember as much as I thought I might. I know a few ghouls who have a way with mechanics. They can probably help."

"Good enough for me." We start walking up and down the paths that lead us to our home, and she worms her way under my one arm that isn't holding a toolbox. "I guess it just means we have to heat up the bath ourselves," she says with a wink.

I try to stop myself from reacting, though I press a kiss into her hair. "You are going to have to behave. It's best if we go slow. We agreed."

"I know, I know, but I was thinking a lot this morning and... I think I'm ready. We've been traveling together, sharing all of these experiences together, even sharing a bed for nine months now. Almost ten. You're my best friend, Charon. I've loved you for so long. I'm scared, but I'm ready." Before I can open my mouth and reply, she interjects with "And if you're not ready, it's totally cool! I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do. It's not an order, it's not a demand. I just want you to know... I'm ready when you are. No pressure."

"Then... tonight we can try. But I don't want to hurt you, and... if I'm being selfish admitting, I don't want you to realize you don't want me." She stops, and stops me, to face me up close, her chest pressed against mine and her face a few inches south of mine. I'll admit, for one hot minute, I'm actually afraid.

"I want you. I have loved you and wanted you for months, but I was afraid to admit it because of your contract, and afraid of rejection. More importantly, my body wants you bad. Do you know how many times in the last few months I've touched myself to the thought of you?" She shines her catlike grin and kisses me, and I groan into her mouth.

"You will be the end of me. Let's go home. Now."


	18. Chapter 18

We storm into the house, startling the dog, and dumping the toolboxes on the couch, kissing all the way. My head and my heart want to go slow, to be sweet, but my body demands I pull her tank top off in one swift motion, nearly ripping it in the process. It demands I twine my fingers through her hair, tugging it a little bit, as I pull her closer and closer. She tears my shirt off, knocking my shotgun to the floor. Before this goes further, I lift her up and carry her fireman style up to our bedroom and gently drop her on the bed, starting to unlace her boots. "Let me," she says. "Do yours."

Then, too soon, we're both there, waiting for the next step - both of us only wearing our pants, her breasts free and perky. Fear shakes me. My nerves threaten to rip their way out of my stomach.

"Come here, Charon," her voice so sweet, so small, shaking slightly. I go to her, and she unbuttons and unzips my pants and tugs them down, setting my cock free. Her eyes go wide for half a second, and she gives me her trademark sly smile before she kisses the head. God, it's so good. A throaty groan slides out of me. But I have to stop her, or this sex will not happen tonight.

"Lay down."

"But -"

"Lay down. Trust me." She obeys, and I tug her pants and panties off - I can tell she's already wet, already ready for me. She slides over on the bed to make room for me, and I lay next to her on my side, running my arm up and down her body, lingering near every sensitive spot. She kisses me gently - my cheek, my temple, my lips, and breathes shallow breaths.

I gently drag my nails up her thigh, not enough to hurt, just enough to entice a reaction - one that consists of a breathy moan. Her chest flushes red and as she searches my eyes, I see nothing but passion in hers. I can't hold back anymore, taking her moans and mumbles of my name, her pleading quietly for more as consent, and I find her heat with my fingers. I pleasure her slowly, wanting to make this - our first experience together - last as long as possible. Not too long, as a few minutes into me stimulating her from within I can already feel her tightening around me, her breath quickening. Her eyes roll back in her head and she grabs the back of my head, tugging on my hair with one hand and gripping the edge of the bed with the other. Her orgasm is punctuated with quiet squeals and desperate moaning as she comes down and I take my fingers away from her. I slide my hand up the side of her body starting at her hip, ending at her breast, where I meet her nipple with a kiss.

"Mm, Charon. Wow." My ego swells.

"Was that as good for you as it was for me?"

She sighs, satisfied. "Better. Are you ready to... you know?"

"Are you? I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to do anything until you're ready."

"Charon... I love you. I'm ready. I want this. I want you."

"I love you, my sweet Amelie." I kiss her lips, her cheeks, nipping her earlobes a few times before moving down to her breasts, paying special attention to each with both my mouth and my hands. I pinch one nipple, not too hard but rough enough to get a squeak as a pleasure response, while I gently toy the other with my tongue. Her breaths have become quick and shallow and I know her body is ready for me, her wetness proving that. "Are you ready for me?," I whisper.

A small voice, thick with love and lust whispers back "yes".

I place the head of my shaft against her entrance, and she moans again. I push it in ever so slightly and her face tightens up in pain. I freeze.

"Do you need me to stop?" I'm so close already, but I would rather die than hurt her now or ever.

"No, no, just go slow. It's going to hurt and that's okay because we need to just get the painful part over with."

"Okay. Slow." Inch by inch, I edge myself inside her. I look up and she has a single tear sliding out the side of her eye. I lean down to get closer to her, so I can kiss her and wipe the tear away.

"I promise I'm not crying. Please, Charon, fuck me." And that's enough to make me throw every reflex and instinct and my contract out the window and slowly revolve in and out of her while I wrap my arms around her body. She grabs my back with both hands, digging her nails into my skin and the pain mixed with pleasure is too much and I groan into her neck, biting down into her skin. I already feel her tightening around my cock, ready to come again and it takes me over the edge. We come together, euphoria and bliss filling the room as we sloppily kiss and pant and try to separate our bodies, though pleasure dictates we shouldn't. Still naked, I hold her as she shivers through the end of her orgasm, and she lazily drapes her arm over mine and kisses my least favorite parts of my face - my lack of a nose, my cheeks, my lips.

"I love you."

"I love you too. My Amelie. My mistress."

Sleepily, she retorts with "Mmm. Okay, you can only call me that under sexual circumstances. Apparently I like it."

I kiss her nose and chuckle. "Go to sleep. I will still love you in the morning."

"Alright, but we are so doing that again. Soon. As soon as I can feel my legs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: This chapter was very daunting to write because it turns out I'm a total prude when it comes to writing about sex! I hope it's as good as I wanted it to be, though. Please feel free to tell me what you think, because I'm going to be *THE MOST* self conscious about this chapter. Also, this story now officially has more chapters, words, and recognition than the novel I've been working on for four years! Thank you all so much for the reviews, the kudos, for reading, and for coming back to keep reading it. I truly appreciate you all. You're sweet on me.)


	19. Chapter 19

An early morning sunrise pokes itself through the one window in our bedroom, waking me from the deepest sleep I've had in a while. I pull the makeshift curtain, made out of an old wool blanket Moira donated to us when we got the house, to as not to wake Amelie from her post-sex sleep. It fails, though, because she groans herself awake, stretching and opening one sleepy eye at me. "Good morning, you."

"Good morning. I hope you slept well?"

"I did. I hope what happened last night wasn't a dream."

"It wasn't. But if it were, it would be among the best I've had."

She smiles and moves to sit up against her pillow, letting a sharp hiss out of her mouth. My hands flutter to her uselessly. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"Ahh. It seems my, um, ladyhood is a little sore. I guess that makes sense, since nothing that big has ever been in there before. It's a muscle, muscles get sore."

I stroke the side of her face gently. "I'm sorry. I should have gone slower."

"No, don't be sorry, Charon. Please. It's well worth it. Feels like a couple days of not pounding a huge cock into it will fix me up, and then... well, we'll just have to practice and work that muscle," she says, raising her eyebrows at me. "Really. Stop giving me that sad look. It doesn't hurt that bad. It feels like, um... well, like a pulled muscle. It was mostly the surprise when I went to sit up that got me."

"Very well. But next time, I'm going to make the experience even better for you."

"Good luck with that. For my first... it was amazing."

I smile, and kiss her deeply. "Good morning, my Amelie.

***

"So, do you know what we could do today, Charon?"

"What's that?"

"If you want, I want to go to Tenpenny Tower. It's been almost two weeks since we got back, and it'll be about a two- day travel if we decide to make camp or stop somewhere to sleep. That should be enough time for them to have cleaned up the mess. But there's ghouls there, and maybe one of them could help us with the hot water problem. Actually, considering the Tower was one of, if not the only place in the Wastes with hot water, I probably shouldn't have helped kill the guy who was running the engineering for the building. Anyway, I'm sure the ghouls might know something, or somebody who knows something. We can take some of our things from here and get our suite set up there so we'll always have a place to stay. And hot water, Charon! We can take a hot shower together. And I can bathe with real soap."

"Do you know you ramble when you are trying to convince me you have a good idea?"

She's actually breathless. She does this often - talks herself out. "Do I?"

I chuckle. My girl. "You do. Very often. I think it's a good idea and we can get ready to set out after we eat. Sex took a lot out of me." As if it knew, her stomach rumbled loudly. "And you, too, it seems. Put on some clothes, Mistress. I don't want to be tempted to fuck you in the kitchen."

"Mm, I dare you to fuck me in the kitchen, bent over the counter," she tests me and slithers close to me and nips at my neck. I roughly grab her still- bare breast in response, pinching her nipple - gentle, but enough to prove my point. She squeaks in response, mouth open and bright eyes, and my cock twitches.

"Alright! Let's get dressed before I lose every ounce of self control I've had for 200 years. The next time I fuck you, it'll be on the balcony of Tenpenny Tower."


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: OH MY GOD. I am so sorry. I had a lot of passion for this story and somehow I just let it fall to the floor when life got in the way. But Fallout 4 came out and I'm back on the ghoulhump train, so here we are. Thank you for reading, reviewing, and coming back to threaten my life. I really needed it.)

The day and a half journey to Tenpenny Tower is shockingly uneventful, save for finding a food sanitizer on the dead body of some poor, torn-apart wastelander who fell victim to the many whims of the wild. The worn instructions on the bottom of the machine claim that you put your food inside the orb on the top, turn it on, and it will clean the food of dirt, germs, but most importantly - radiation. Doesn't affect me at all, but it's good for Amelie, and it's good for the dog - the last thing I need is either of them dying - or worse, ghoulification. I almost threw the strange machine away at first, but I noticed the label on the bottom that clearly defined its worth. Good thing I did - I'm not sure how much longer the dog can eat irradiated Cram.

By night we set up a tent to sleep in, but Amelie only puts her bottom half inside one. She lays her pack under her head as a pillow and stares up at the stars in wonder, in fear, in amazement.

"My whole life was lit up by that gross fake lighting. When I left the Vault, I thought my life was over. That everything out here would kill me. Especially seeing plants and animals destroyed the way they are, I... I never imagined anything could be as beautiful as the sky is. Charon, sometimes I see shapes in the stars. Am I losing my mind?"

I can't help but chuckle at her as I copy her position, looking up at the stars for myself. "No, there really are shapes. Constellations. There are dozens of them, I think, just up there in the sky. I don't remember their names now, but every one of them was once called something."

"Wow. Maybe we can come up with some new names. Like that one," she points toward a constellation sort of shaped like a lion, "looks kinda like a dog. We can call it the Dogmeat constellation." She starts giggling, clearly overtired and thinking she's hilarious. Which, of course, she is.

"The Dogmeat constellation it is. I'm surprised they didn't teach you about space in your school in the Vault."

"They didn't teach us much about the real world. We learned a lot of stuff that only mattered way before the War, like... dinosaurs, and international relations that led up to the War... and math. I guess they weren't that concerned with space, because none of us were ever supposed to see it for ourselves."

"And yet, here you are."

"Admittedly, I never would have left if it wasn't for my dad, who we still haven't found, who may be dead, and whose actions nearly got me killed when he left the Vault, so I'm a little mad at him... but here we are. Extenuating circumstances, I guess." She gently takes my hand, stroking my palm with her thumb. I can barely feel it through my rough skin.

"I'll take first watch. Go to sleep,mon cherie."

She closes her eyes and lets her head fall away, settling into sleep. "What does that mean?"

"It means 'my darling'. Your name is French, yes? I thought it would be funny."

"Hmm. Not funny. Sweet." She falls into slumber, and I let her stay there for twelve hours.

***

"I can't believe you let me sleep that long, Charon!" Amelie shouts at me as she haphazardly throws the tent together in her pack. I take it from her hurried hands and neatly fold and stuff it in the pack.

"You needed it, clearly, or else you wouldn't have slept so soundly. I need less sleep than you do, and that's a fact, so don't be upset because you feel bad that you slept, and I didn't." She stares up at me with anger in her eyes, not for the first time in our nine months, but one of only a few times.

She takes one long, deep breath. "Fine. I'm sorry I got mad. I hate thinking that you put off your own needs for my well-being." She takes her pack from me and slings it on. A few clicks on her Pip-Boy and she turns on her heel, facing the sun at an angle. "Tower's this way, we're still about an hour away. Let's go get the job done, hmm?"

"Just think, Amelie," and I wrap an arm around her waist, gripping her hipbone that sticks out a bit too far for my liking, "hot showers. Hot food that we don't have to cook ourselves. Maybe one of the ghouls had a long lost dream of being a massage therapist, or a barber." She smiles and turns her head to look up at me, and her hair catches in the sun, turns from deep brown to golden bronze in a heartbeat.

"That does sound appealing. And a huge, comfortable bed, as long as Roy kept true to his promise."

And he did keep true. The last empty suite on the top of the tower, the one not occupied by Tenpenny or Burke when they were alive, is all ours. All it contains now is a huge bed, radio, working refrigerator, tons of storage space, and its very own full bathroom. There's also a wooden door leading out to the balcony, which we immediately venture to after throwing our packs on the bed. The view, as it were, is beautiful - as beautiful as a full, miles-wide view of the Wasteland could possibly be. Being able to see all the way to downtown DC is kind of amazing. Amelie will be happy to come out here at night, when the stars are out.

We unpack a few basic items that will stay in our Tenpenny suite no matter where we lay our heads - a small caps stash and a lockpicking kit locked in a triple-locked, hidden floor safe that only we know the combination to; some foods stashed in the (working and functional!) refrigerator, and some spare pajamas for each of us on the shelves on the wall.

"Let's go find some ghouls, huh? See what's become of Tenpenny Tower now."

"Let's." The elevator to the first floor needs its lightbulb replaced - it flickers too steadily, and irritates my eyes. The bell dings gently and the doors open, and the ghoul at the greeter's desk turns to face us.

"Ah, leaving so soon after your arrival?"

"No, we're going to look around a bit. This place looks amazing! It's completely spotless! I didn't notice when we came in..." Amelie observes. Now, with my eyes adjusting to the bright fluorescent lights, I see the floors shine, the carpets clean, and even the fake plants seem more lively. The greeter ghoul follows my gaze to the plants.

"Oh, the plants are my favorite feature of the lobby now. I replaced those faded old fake ones with real ones! I don't know what its real name is, so I just call them the leafy trees."

Amelie stares, enamored. "They're... real? Real plants? Real oxygen?"

"I don't know much about oxygen, but the plants are real! I planted the seeds myself! In the cave I lived in before we moved in here, I had my own greenhouse, of sorts. I had found a bunch of seeds on the body of some doctor, so I figured since he wasn't usin' 'em. I dug down deep, purified my own water, and found some light and the trees grew! I had to take them with me when I heard about the new Tower. They're my babies, you know?"

"They're beautiful. Only once out here have I ever seen a real plant that wasn't dead already... it's amazing. Where can we get something to eat, Mr...?"

"Uh, Tarb. Just Tarb. I know, it's an unusual name, but I chose it for myself 100 years ago and now I can't get rid of it. Anywho, you can head on over to the diner on your left and get some grub from Carol. She's got the best steak in the Wastes."

"Well, thank you, Tarb. I appreciate all your help." Tarb took his place back at the reception desk in the center of the room while we headed left, to Carol's. "Charon, do you think it's the Carol?"

"It's possible. There can be only so many ghouls named Carol in this part of the country, you would think." We walk into the too-brightly lit diner. Sure enough, it's our very own Carol, from Underworld. The sweetest woman you'd ever meet in centuries, but a painful reminder of the place that was my 'home' for a few decades. Upon our entry, she looks to the door and recognition passes across her face, and she lights up.

"Well, well! Look what the cat dragged in. How are you kids doing?"

"Fine, Carol. How are things here? Why would you ever move out of Underworld?" Amelie asks as she sits on a puffy cushioned barstool. I follow suit.

Carol motions for us to take menus, little pamphlets with crude drawings of the food she serves. "To be honest, I was sick to death of that place. But where else could a ghoul go and open her own business? With Ahzrukhal gone and the threat of him closing us down every day out of the way... business thrived. Until it didn't. A few months ago the traders just stopped coming by all of a sudden. No idea why, not enough manpower to find out and keep Underworld safe. We think Ahzrukhal had made some deals with the traders to make sure we were on their routes and when the deal ran out, they didn't bother questioning it. Most of them hated ghouls, anyway. Thought we were freaks, thought it was contagious or something. They had no problems buying Ultra-Jet from us, though. The handful of passers-by every week kept us in business enough for a few months.

"And then we heard on the radio that Tenpenny Tower had changed hands, so to speak, and a few of us packed up shop and made our way here. It was terrifying, to be honest. I hadn't really left Underworld in so long, I forgot how bad it gets out in the world. But I made it."

"And where is Greta?" I never much cared for Greta, though I never hated her or wished death upon her or anything like that. Not much but apathy. She wasn't very nice to anyone but Carol, and she did nothing but sneer at me as I stood helplessly in my corner in The Ninth Circle, as if there was anything I could have done to make her opinion of me change. But in my thirty years in Underworld, I never saw the two away from each other. Not once.

"Greta didn't want to come," Carol said with a shake in her voice and a heavy sigh. "She figured she could keep track of business there, and I could keep track of business here. I've been with her for almost 70 years, and she just wrote me off, like that. So now I'm Carol's Diner, and she's Greta's Hotel. Which is funny, because I used to do the beds and she used to do the food."

"Oh. I... I'm sorry. That is unfortunate to hear. Maybe she will change her mind one day?" It's a reach, but Carol is, at her core, a sweet woman, and to see her upset pains even me.

She smiles. "Maybe. Anyway, enough about that. Eat! That's why you stopped in, isn't it?"

***

Two helpings each of Carol's almost-fresh salisbury steak later and Amelie pushes her stool back, one hand on her stomach. I can hold my food better than she does, and even I'm stuffed to the neck. "God, Carol, that was amazing. It's so nice to eat hot food that Charon or I didn't have to cook ourselves. How much for the meal?"

Carol deliberates for a moment. "80 caps, I'll say. Between you and me, I haven't quite decided how I want to price things yet."

Amelie reaches into her pack and pulls out one sack of pre-counted caps, holding it out to Carol. "Then here's 100. We should get going. I feel like I haven't bathed in weeks, and it was a long-ass walk from Megaton."

"Thank you so much, dear. I really appreciate it." She takes the caps, but holds Amelie's hand for a moment, tight enough that she can't get away. "I don't know what you two," she glances at me, "have going on with each other. There are rumors across the Wastes. Whatever you have, hold on to each other. Don't let anything, anything stand in the way of your relationship. Do you hear me?" There is an urgency to her message, one that causes an uncomfortable tingling sensation in the bottom of my stomach.

"Yes, Carol. Yes. I hear you." Amelie slowly takes her hand away, leaving the caps behind. "We'll be back for dinner later, okay?" Carol only nods in response and we step out of the diner and make our way to the elevator. "What do you think these rumors are about us?"

"Probably nothing good. Nothing good ever comes from a smoothskin and a ghoul in cahoots together, whether they're, ah... cahooting or not. Whether the deeds we do are good or bad, they are our deeds, and I can only hope the damn radio jockey isn't giving us a bad name for things he knows nothing about."

"Good point." We step inside the elevator and hit the Up button. It lurches, dropping down a foot before shooting upwards. Amelie launches herself at the back of the elevator to hold onto the support bar. "Ugh, I guess we really should go pay him a visit one of these days. I just don't want to, you know, traverse through the metro, stumble my way through Super Mutant territory, and then, worst of all, be around someone who only talks in hyperbole."

"Hyperbole?"

"It's like... exaggeration. Everything about Three-Dog is extreme and metaphors, and while I'm sure it brings joy to the wasteland... I didn't grow up out here, and it doesn't cheer me up most days. It just makes me sad. It makes me miss my friends."

"Oh." It's hard to mask the hurt in my voice. It's stupid, for me to feel hurt.

"No, I didn't mean it that way! Just, you know, you spend 19 years of your life with the same thirty people, and some of them you love, and, sure, some of them you hate. And then one day you're ripped away from them, probably to never see them again, ever... it hurts. I didn't really get to say goodbye. I'm sure you get it."

"I did. ... I did. I understand."

The elevator stops and the doors stick for a moment. "You know, I love you. I really do, Charon. I wouldn't want to be with anyone else out here, and not just because I can trust a thousand percent that you have my back in a fight. I love you." My heart threatens to flutter and fly its way out of my chest. If a ghoul could blush...

"I, er. I love you too. You know that, don't you?"

She smiles the sly smile, the one I hate to love. "I do."


	21. Chapter 21

"Oh my God, I need a fucking shower like an addict needs a hit," Amelie says as she drops her pack and half of her clothes on the floor of our suite in one fell swoop. All that's left on her is her tank top and pants, and she's already unbuttoning those. I start to remove my armor piece by piece. As she drops her pants she pops her head into the bathroom. "Score! There's even soap in the shower. This day just gets better."

"A true triumph: soap."

She snickers, yanking off her tank top, only in her underpants. "Shush. Oh, Charon, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so rude. Do you want the first shower?"

I let my eyes wander her body. "Why don't we shower together? That way, neither of us is first."

She winks at me. "Works for me."

It's not a sexy shower. Not at first. Not when we peel away our clothes and step under the hot water and realize just how caked in filth we both are. Even with bathing in cold water regularly, nothing beats soap and hot water. It turns out that Amelie's hair is actually quite soft and about an inch longer than I thought, once the knots and curls are washed away.

She rubs my cold hands warm again and I place one hand on her breast and one on her cheek. I flick her nipple with my thumb and she softly sighs, closing her eyes and leaning into me slightly. She stands on the balls of her feet to kiss me deeply, and her tongue finds its way to mine. It's strange how absolutely normal it feels to be with her this way; naked, wet, kissing and touching each other. Like we should have been doing it all along.

Amelie runs her hand down my chest, my stomach, my pelvis, until she reaches my - "Mmmmh, Amelie." She strokes a soapy hand up and down my shaft and in seconds I'm rock hard, my tip pressing into her stomach.

"You like that?"

"Yes, mistress." She lets the water run down my body and rinse the soap off, and she gets down on her knees. We lock eyes and she has both hands wrapped around my shaft. She's shaking ever so slightly. "Are you alright?"

"Never better. Just nervous. I've never done this before, this part."

"You don't have to -"

"I want to. Let me do this," she kisses the head of my dick, then starts to take the entire thing in her mouth. Oh my God, I love this woman.

I can only last a few minutes with her working on my cock like a professional, her nails digging into my leg and hot water running down my chest. I don't have time to warn her and I bust into her mouth.

"Amelie, my Amelie," I moan, as she takes it all. She pulls away and looks up at me, snickering.

"That was fun. I'd like to practice that some more. We both need to get a grip on the 'sex' thing, I think. We're both far too easy."

If I could, I would flush with embarrassment. "Well, over 200 years of inexperience will do that to a man. Especially with a woman as beautiful as you," I say as I take her into my arms. The hot water starts to run cold, but we're clean anyway, so we jump out. Someone has even left clean (well... as clean as anything ever is) towels in the bathroom.

"Give me your clothes, I'm going to go wash everything in the sink while I have the chance. I have some spare stuff with me for both of us. Although..." She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me hard, "I'm perfectly fine staying butt-ass naked for the day." She drops her towel and grabs our dirty clothes, stalking back into the bathroom. I watch her hips sway as she leaves me and resist the urge to grab those hips and take her from behind. I flop backwards onto our bed and bring my towel up to my face and groan into it, just loud enough for her to her my frustrations.

"You know, mistress, you absolutely are going to be the death of me!" My voice muffled by the towel. She chuckles from the other room. She knows. Oh, she knows.

She peeks her head out the door at me, my shirt in one hand and the bar of soap in the other, and says "I'm just trying to build you up for later, big boy." She winks and closes the door behind her. Where was this side of her hiding for the last nine months? She kept this behind a wall the entire time she's known me? She's stronger than I thought. I can hear her humming a tune I don't recognize as she scrubs the grime out of our clothes.

* * *

Later in the night, I wake up to a cold, empty bed and the muffled sound of a man's voice. At first I'm alarmed - who is in our room? Why is he here? Where is Amelie? I panic before I see the green hue of her Pip-Boy's light illuminating the bathroom through a crack in the door. I quietly slide out of bed and creep up to the bathroom door - not wanting to intrude, but, of course, curiosity killed the cat.

"'...Evergreen Mills, and it's well-hidden in some garage. But I'll find it, I have to. It's so close, but that's the story of Project Purity, isn't it? An eternity of 'almost there's'. Let's see if Braun has the missing puzzle piece.'"

It must be her father's holotapes. We found them in the Jefferson Memorial weeks ago, but she wasn't ready to listen to them. She started with the first holotape - one from before her birth, before her mother's passing. When she realized she couldn't handle it, she ejected the holotape and put them all in a small compartment of her pack, doomed to be forgotten for a while. I hear the click of the holotape ejecting, and the beep of a new one beginning. This one began with a woman's voice.

"...that batch of tests was inconclusive, but Madison and I are convinced it's a problem with the secondary filtration system. We're going to recalibrate the equipment and try again tomorrow, so that... James, please, I'm trying to work. Now's not the time..."

I heard Amelie sniffle and eject the holotape. It clatters to the floor and she quietly sobs, but it's muffled - she must have buried her face in her arms. I push the bathroom door open to find her in a ball on the floor, crying almost silently.

"Hey. Hey, now. It's okay. Come here, my love." I took her in my arms and pulled her close to my chest, squeezing her tight, squeezing the pain away.

"I thought," she says in between sobs, "I thought I could get some answers out of the holotapes. I th- thought l was ready. I," hiccup, "I didn't know my mom would be on the holotape. I nev- I never heard her voice before but somehow I knew it was her. It hurts so bad, Ch-ch-charon. It hurts."

I never knew what to do when people got overly emotional like this. Never in my 200-odd years did anyone ever tell me how to handle a crying, emotional teenage girl whose heart hurts more than any kid deserves to hurt. But I hold her, and I rock her slowly and kiss her head until the sobs slow, then stop.

"I'm sorry. I don't know why that affected me like it did. I just... there's a lot to deal with, you know? There's a lot of things that happen in my life that I don't actually deal with, I just file them away in my head for later... and I guess this was later." I release her from my iron grip and grab a small towel, dampening it to wash the tears from her face. "Thank you... for being here for me. I didn't mean to wake you."

"Technically, you did not wake me. Your father did. And... it is my job to keep you safe and happy, yes, but it is also something I want to do. I heard how upset you were and while I did not know how to fix it, I figured... if I held you tight enough, you might feel safe. Secure. And maybe you would feel better."

Her eyes well up with tears all over again. "Charon, you're too good for the likes of me." I put the damp towel over her eyes and cover her face with it, and she laughs. "Okay, maybe not. But... I love you anyway, you big lug. ... Well, I guess the bright side is I know where my dad went. Vault 112. Ever heard of it?"

I ponder for a moment. "No, I don't believe so. I'm not well-versed in the vaults, unfortunately. But I heard him describe a general location, if you're interested in leaving in the morning."

"I am. He said West of Evergreen Mills, and the coordinates on the holotape lead to... not that far from here. So I figured we can head there and figure out our next step as we go."

"Ah, flying by the seats of our pants, as always. I like it. But we should give a wide berth to Evergreen Mills. It's a raider camp, and not a small one."

She sighs, stretching as she gets off the bathroom floor. "Alright. Then we might as well go back to sleep. We might have a long day tomorrow. Who knows what will happen?"


	22. Chapter 22

I see the telltale signs of raiders in the distance ahead of us - bodies on pikes, limbs and torsos hanging from chains lashed to makeshift shacks. No one knows why raiders do the things they do, but anyone who can act like that by choice was just... born without any humanity.

I motion to Amelie to crouch behind the rocks. She peeks through the scope on her plasma rifle and whistles. "It's like a canyon, so I can't see who's inside but I spot at least twelve on this upper ridge. We definitely have to go around this by far, we'll never survive if we try to take them on."

"It's your call." I check her Pip-Boy's map. "Stay crouched, follow this rock pile to the left. There's a small mountain going down toward our destination that will provide with sufficient cover, but we have to stay careful until then." She takes a shaky breath, but nods - I know she hates this part. Fighting our enemies head-on, she has no issue with. But having to sneak around them and risk getting caught and not having the upper hand, that's where she's shaken up. If they didn't have far more firepower than we do, there would be no question - we could take them. We're a strong enough team.

We sneak around the canyon behind our mountain cover, and the raiders would never have known. We make it to a declining hill and catch our breath; I had been holding my breath for a solid few minutes and didn't realize it. She lays on her stomach on the top of the hill of sand and peers through her scope again.

"And they're none the wiser. We're clear! Oh, that one just inhaled Jet through his nose. That... can't be comfortable. Oh, he's crying! This is awesome," she laughs. "Oh... he threw up."

I hold back a chuckle. "Come on, you. We're making good time. I see something ahead."

She turns the scope over to the west. "It's a... garage? Okay. I don't see anyone, or any sort of fortification, so it's probably empty. At least it looks like it might be a good place to take a break and eat; I'm fucking starving."

"You ate an entire can of pork and beans before we left."

"Yeah, and when I get stressed I get hungry!" She says, indignantly. I raise (what would be) my eyebrows at her, and she says "Well, sometimes. Shut up, let's just go." She hurries off ahead of me.

I mumble "I was only concerned for your health and well-being, but whatever," but it falls on deaf ears.

"Smith Casey's. Alright. I don't see anything else for miles, so this must be what my Dad was talking about... how could there be a vault hidden in here?"

"They are underground, yes? Perhaps this building goes deeper than it seems."

"Perhaps. Well... let's go. Sounds quiet here, but...gun's out anyway."

We move in and find only radroaches and mole rats. Easy pickings. The garage is made up of two large rooms, and it's not until I step on a large metal plate and hear an echo that I realize where the vault entrance must be.

"Amelie, here. This is a hatch of some sort." Behind me, she finds a switch and the door opens under my feet. I nearly fall, and Amelie cracks up through her nerves.

We head down into the vault. Amelie triggers the large, gear-shaped door to open. It's actually kind of amazing - it's loud, and the mechanics grind, but two hundred years after the world ended and it still works perfectly fine... there's something to be said about American craftsmanship, I suppose.

I reach down and lay my hand on the small of her back, rubbing circles with my thumb. She's shaking. Are you going to be alright?"

"I am. I'm just... a little afraid of being back in a vault. It's been a while. Would you feel nervous if we went back to Underworld?"

"More than nervous."

"Then you understand."

A robobrain approaches, holding out a stack of vault suits. "Welcome to Vault 112, resident! According to sensors, you have arrived 202.3 years behind schedule. Please re-dress in your Vault-Tec issued Vault suit before proceeding. If you have misplaced your suit, I am authorized to distribute a new one. Once dressed, please proceed down the stairs to the main floor so that you may enter your assigned Tranquility Lounger."

"Oh, I... okay, thank you?" Amelie takes the vault suit and unfolds it as we walk further into the vault. It's identical to her Vault 101 suit, save for the fact that it's in near-pristine condition. Two hundred years, and nothing touched this vault.

"It seems awfully quiet here. Was your vault like this?"

"No... someone would have heard the door open, someone would have noticed something by now. So what's up with this vault?" We enter the main room, and see what the issue is - every vault resident is locked in a strange pod. "And these must be the... Tranquility Loungers?" She cautiously approaches the pods, and then rushes over to one. "Dad! Oh my god, how long has he been in here? His face is all haggard. Dad! Can you hear me?" The man's eyes flit back and forth, but no response. "God, this is creepy. Alright, so... maybe one of these terminals can open this up?" She hacks into every terminal, then clicks her tongue disappointedly. "Nope. Every single one is just a vitals readout. There's no eject or shutdown at all. These people... they're half-dead, Charon. It makes sense, since they've been in this weird stasis in this simulation for 200 years, but... my God, I hope they're okay in there. These readings are so low, all except for my dad's. His aren't as bad; BP is a little low, brain activity is normal enough."

"Then I suppose you have no choice but to join them in this... simulation. Perhaps something went wrong and you have to go in to get him out."

"Charon..." She walks over to me and puts her hands on either side of my face. "I don't want to. But apparently I have to. If I'm not out in a day... smash that fucker open. I'm not about to risk it now for my dad's sake, but I'm young and healthy and whatever happens, I can take it." She chews on her lip for a moment, staring at James' pod. "Alright. I have to do this. I kind of want to throw up."

I chuckle. "It will be okay. One way or another. ... I love you, my Amelie."

"I love you. So much, I don't think you'll ever know." Amelie slides into a pod, the glass cover closes over her, and her eyes glaze over as the simulation begins.

I take a seat on the floor, leaning against the wall, pulling my shotgun into my lap. And I wait.

***

Six hours later, alarms start going off. Loud, frantic beeps emerge from the terminals and I hurry to Amelie's pod, panic pooling in my stomach. Her breathing is sharp and erratic, and her eyes flit side to side desperately, never finding what they're looking for. And then, the clouds in her eyes fade, and she finds my face. The pod releases her with a hiss, and she grips me tightly.

"You're okay, love. You're okay."

"I know, I know. It was awful. I'll tell you about it later. But my dad is okay, see?" His pod, behind me, hisses open. "He, uh. He was a dog," she snickers, walking over to James' pod. He sits up and rubs his eyes.

"Amelie! Oh, it's really you. I was so afraid that was another part of that hellscape simulation. Darling, you look... tan? What are you doing out here? I left you in that vault to keep you safe from the wasteland, and you just leave anyway and follow me here?"

"You left me there thinking I'd be safe? Dad, they tried to kill me! They killed Jonas thinking he knew where you went! They came after me, and not just with batons. They shot at me." She unbuttons her armor and lifts her shirt up just past her bellybutton, showing James the thick, misshapen scar there. "They shot at me, and they got me. If Amata hadn't given me stimpaks and a gun before she told me I had to leave, I'd be dead right now. I was never safe there, not without you."

James' face crumples. "If I knew..."

"Oh, dad," her face softens. "You couldn't have known. I didn't think they would turn on me, either. But they did, because you were a liability, and you left. Apparently just opening the vault door put every life in danger, even though now that I've lived out here for almost ten months, I know that's bullshit."

"Ten months?! Then that means I've been inside the simulation for nearly... nine. Nine months... no wonder my stomach is growling. I haven't eaten in almost a year!"

"Oh, come on, dad. Let's go and get out of this creepy room and get some food in you. We can catch up."

***

"Well, it sounds like you two have had quite a few adventures. And, Charon, you are who to my daughter, exactly? You sound like a good mercenary, but... you are a stranger, and I feel the need to protect Amelie."

"We are, uh..."

"We're partners in crime-fighting, dad. Actually, we're... a little more than that. I don't want to say boyfriend, because he's a 200 year old grown man, but... he's my something. And I honestly don't care if you have a problem with it, because there's nothing you can do to change my feelings for him, or his for me."

His eyes read me for a moment or two. I stare back - my instinct is to glare, to intimidate, but I don't. That wouldn't help anything. I try to soften my expression, to pretend I don't have two centuries of violence and murder under my belt.

Never letting up on his gaze, James says "I suppose it doesn't matter whether I approve or not, then. I trust your judgment, honey. If you are happy, and he keeps you safe, then it's good enough for me."

Amelie leans back against the wall, surprise on her face. "Wow. Thank you, dad. I really appreciate that. Now, what did you do before you ended up here? You were out for a whole month before you landed here. I was one step behind you the whole time, and now I can't believe you were under my nose all along."

"You followed in my footsteps. That was about it. I made it to Megaton, went to GNR, found my way back to Rivet City... which was no small feat, I assure you. Twenty years in the vault made it easy to forget how to get there. I went to the Jefferson and discovered that Dr. Braun might have the answers I was looking for. And then I came here. When I found these people in the simulation, I didn't think anything was strange about it. It seems like an interesting experiment, at least - it's not cryogenics, but yet their bodies are still perfectly preserved after 200 years. But then I was trapped inside the simulation with no way out. I discovered the failsafe when that old woman started rambling about it, but there was nothing I could do as a dog. I will never take my thumbs for granted again."

"I'm so sorry we didn't come sooner, Dad. I only found your holotapes a few months ago, and I just... I wasn't ready to listen to them yet. I heard the one where you were talking about mom..."

"Ah, yes. When we discovered she was pregnant with you. That was one of the best days of my life."

Amelie smiles, but her eyes are sad. "I just figured you would come back to the Jefferson at some point, so we waited. I left you a note there, in case you came back. Then last night I couldn't take it anymore, and I listened to the holotapes. That's why we're here now."

"I'm glad you came. A part of me regrets leaving the vault, only because I now know that I left you in danger. I'm sorry, darling. If I knew, I never would have left, or else I would have taken you with me. But I know that Project Purity can be restarted, and I know we can get it working. We will be able to start saving the world."

Looking at Amelie together with her father, I see so much of him in her. Her eyes, for one - they have the same shape and color, an ashy, muted green. Their hair is the same golden brown, though James' has gray flecks in it. But their spirit - it's all the same. The vault girl, the one who tries to do the right thing by everyone who deserves it, the girl who is so good from her very core, the girl who sometimes makes the wrong call and feels immense guilt for it later... this is James's daughter.

"Let's get some sleep. I know I was only in the sim for a few hours, but I'm exhausted." Amelie rolls out her sleeping pad, and I hesitate to roll mine out next to hers. But I do it, because I know she will want to be held while she sleeps. In the safety of the vault, behind the locked door, I don't bother to take first watch - I just sleep soundly, with my love in my arms.


	23. Chapter 23

James sends us on asinine errands in the first few weeks back to work on Project Purity. Fetch this, do that, start this engine, hack this mainframe. Amelie is desperate to spend every spare second with her father, but he keeps assuring her that once all the hard work is done, they will have all the time in the world to be together. We trudge off to every errand, guns in hand, despite the strange looks from the Purity scientists who are rarely, if ever, armed. But they have been safe in their laboratories, and we have been out in the wastes. We know better.

While draining the intake pipes of the Jefferson, I hear a propeller above us.

"What the hell is that?"

"Sounds like a vertibird. Which can't mean anything good."

James' voice comes over the intercom in the pipe control room. "Stay calm, everyone. We've got visitors."

Amelie looks up through the grate above us. "The Enclave?" She rushes to one door while I run to the other, but we're locked in until the pipe finishes draining. Every second counts, and we're fucking trapped. My door clicks to open and I pull her through it just as an Enclave officer spots us and starts shooting. I blindly lead Amelie through the tunnels under the Jefferson, right into the ambush; I take out two officers as Amelie nails one straight in the face and he melts in an instant. She picks up his gun and takes whatever ammo he had left for his plasma rifle.

"Payback, motherfucker."

"Shooting him in the face wasn't payback enough?"

Amelie laughs nervously, almost hysterically. "Now's not the time for your snark, Charon. My fucking dad is in there and he's probably unarmed because he's stupid and thought he was safe here. Ow, fuck!" She looks down, and the muscle in her upper arm is torn and bleeding, and some skin has been singed by plasma. "Alright, there's no time to deal with this right now. Let's go. The rotunda."

We move quickly, taking out any and everything we come across, and easily sneak into the rotunda. We hear a man's voice, unfamiliar and muffled, with a southern twang to it. He talks with authority, as if he knows everyone in the room is at his attention. He is not President Eden, but he must be his second-in-command, this man in the tan trenchcoat.

"The person in charge is to step forward immediately, and turn over all materials related to this project."

"That's quite impossible. This is a private project, the Enclave has no authority here. I'm going to have to ask you to leave at once."

"Am I to assume, sir, that you are in charge?"

"Yes, I am responsible for this project.

"Then I repeat, you are hereby instructed to immediately hand over all materials related to the purifier." The man emphasizes every other word, as if he was speaking to someone who doesn't know English.

"I'm sorry, but that's..."

"Furthermore," the man interrupts, "you are to assist Enclave scientists in assuming control of the administration and operation of this facility at once."

"Colonel... is it Colonel? I'm sorry, but this facility is not operational. It never has been. I'm afraid you are wasting your time here." Amelie throws herself at the glass door, the only thing separating her from her father. James doesn't spare a glance at her; he's too busy playing the most dangerous game with his life.

"Sir, this is the last time I am goin' to repeat myself. Stand down at once and turn over control of this facility."

"Colonel, I assure you that this facility will not function. We have never been able to successfully replicate test results..."

The man in the tan trenchcoat, this Colonel, pulls out his pistol and shoots Janice, one of the Rivet City scientists locked in the rotunda with James and the Colonel, point-blank in the face. Dr. Li, to my left, screams once and then composes herself, her face locked in a grimace. Tears start to silently stream down her face; they must have worked together for a long time.

"I suggest you comply immediately, sir, in order to prevent any more incidents. Are we clear?"

"Yes, Colonel..." James catches my eye for a moment, and I fear what comes next when I see that look. "I'll do whatever you want. There's no need for more violence. Give me a few moments to bring the system online."

James turns his back to the Colonel and faces the purifier's control panel, blocking the view. He types in a code, and suddenly I feel a hot, sharp blast of strong radiation, and Amelie gasps in pain; to a human, this much radiation feels like a 500 degree oven in one instant.

The Colonel collapses, but James takes a handful of Rad-X - just enough for his last words. He hobbles over to the door where Amelie has thrown herself against the glass in a panic. He places his palm against hers on the glass. The pain and sadness in his eyes... that's something I will never forget, not even if I live another thousand years.

"... Daddy?" Every ounce of the wasteland hardened nineteen year old woman that I know is gone in an instant. Standing in front of me, clutching her chest with one hand and desperately reaching for her father with the other... suddenly, she's a young girl again.

"I love you, Amelie. With all of my heart. I'm so sorry. Go, baby. Run. RUN!" He collapses, and I know he will never get back up. Not with that much radiation. Amelie stares at his body, mouth open in shock, empty-faced. Broken. Her one remaining parent, gone in a second. An orphan in the wastes.

Dr. Li, behind me, is puffy-faced... but strong enough. "Amelie, we have to go. There are service tunnels that will lead us to safety, but we need you now. The time to mourn will come. I... I'm so sorry. I loved James, too."

Amelie doesn't even bring herself to respond. She storms off out of the rotunda, gun in hand, murdering anything that gets in her way.

* * *

The Brotherhood of Steel allow us refuge for a few hours after we arrive at the Citadel. Amelie plops down in a booth opposite of me in their grungy, makeshift diner, then does nothing but stare at her hands. Aside from shouting to each other during combat on the way here, we haven't spoken. There's nothing I can say, nothing I can do to make it better. All I can do is pull out a Nuka-Cola from my pack and slide it across the table. She alternates between staring at her hands, to staring at the table, to spinning the Nuka cap with her fingers.

An hour passes before she speaks. It's so sudden I nearly leap out of what's left of my skin.

"I'm sorry."

I stare at her incredulously. "Why... are you sorry?"

She hesitates. "For what you're going to have to put up with for the next few weeks. Or months, maybe. I... am supremely not okay. I don't know how to mourn, because I've never had to do it before, not really. I have to put this in the back of my mind for right now, because I know this is just the beginning of all the shit. When we can finally get home... I don't know if I'll cry, or scream, or break everything I own. I don't know yet. So I'm apologizing in advance for... whatever comes next."

I slowly take her hand and lace her fingers through mine. She lets a sob escape, then composes herself.

"Charon, I understand if you need to go away for a while while I deal with this-"

"No. I am not going anywhere. I am here for you. Through the worst parts of your life, I love you. And in the coming weeks, you may need someone to lean on. I am here. Always. Do you understand?" I try to keep my voice gentle. "Not because I have to be. This is one situation where the contract actually does not bind me to you. I do. So let me be here. Unless you need to be alone, and if that is the case, I will let you be."

For the first time since her father's death, she looks into my eyes - really looks into them, and I swear I see her whole life. Past, present and future. I swear in those green eyes I see her as a child, being pushed down by her friend, Butch. I see her first kiss, with Amata. I feel her fear, her anger when she woke up the night her father left. I see us, her and I, five years from now, patrolling the wastes. Her face is hardened by time, and pain, but the smile she gives me are all the same. They're my smiles. Can she feel that I know her, now? That I truly understand her pain?

She only whispers, "I love you," and looks away.

* * *

A scribe, bald and in torn, red robes, enters the diner and approaches us.

"Hello, Amelie. I wanted to offer my condolences. Your father was an amazing man, and a brilliant scientist. And, clearly, a good father, since you are such a well-rounded young woman."

Amelie sort of... glares at him. He would never notice; only I know the subtleties of her face well enough to know. She holds herself together, though, and tells the Scribe "thank you."

"I... am afraid we have to get right to business now that everyone of Project Purity has been accounted for. Your father kept his notes secure, and they've been extracted successfully. The Enclave cannot start the purifier without the code, or without a G.E.C.K. Since their intentions for the purifier are less than pure, so to speak, it is pertinent we retrieve a G.E.C.K. before they ever realize they require one. We know where one may be, but we need you to extract it. With everything going on here and at the Jefferson Memorial... we simply can't spare the manpower."

She contemplates for a moment, possibly a moment too long. The Scribe looks to me, confusion written all over his face, wondering if she will ever answer him, or possibly thinking she may have become a mute due to trauma.

"Fine. Give me the details and we'll head out."


	24. Chapter 24

We're a mile out of the Citadel, after discovering there is a G.E.C.K. in Vault 87, to the west. It's a heavily irradiated Vault, and the entrance is hidden deep in a cave called Little Lamplight, a settlement made up of only young children. I make a mental note, remembering the children we found in Andale, the cannibal town, all those months ago. The memory seems a lifetime away.

"We don't have to do this now," I tell Amelie, but she's already waving my words away.

"I know, so we're heading back to Megaton for a few days. It's on the way anyway, and I need to recuperate. I'd love a hot shower, but Tenpenny is so far out of the way."

"So, back home it is."

She smiles up at me, squinting into the sun. "Back home."

Megaton. We haven't been here in weeks and the atmosphere has changed drastically. Instead of the indifferent or dirty looks we usually get, people look down, not meeting our eyes. Or worse, they come forward to offer condolences. One woman, a wanderer who came to Megaton months ago for a temporary place to stay and never left, pushes a Med-X syringe into Amelie's hand." 

"Here. For all you've done for us."

"Oh... thank you, ma'am..." She turns to me. "I guess these sad faces mean Three-Dog's been howling up a storm about us?"

"I suppose so. That damn jockey doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut."

"It's... fine. As long as he doesn't happen to find out where we're going and shout about it all over the radio. We have a leg up on the Enclave right now, and I'd like to keep it that way. Let's go home."

"Good to see you alive and well, madam!" Wadsworth, the robot butler, excitedly announced, just as he did every other time we came home from a long excursion. Me, however, he could care less about.

"Thanks, Wadsworth. Could you make me some water?"

"Of course, mum. Right-o."

Amelie goes through the motions of the Megaton routine - unpacking her pack, storing things in her locker, hiding caps in the various stashes hidden around the house. Wadsworth drops a few bottles of purified water on the coffee table and floats upstairs to... do whatever he does all day. Clean, maybe.

"Charon..." Amelie drops her mostly empty pack on the table and turns to me. "We need to talk."

My heart drops into my stomach and my mind reels with possibilities - is she firing me? Is she, for lack of a better term, 'breaking up' with me?

"No, no, don't start panicking. Don't make the panic face. It's nothing bad. I was just... thinking about contingency plans."

"Oh?"

"In case... we ever get separated. Or if I die. When I die, I should say, since I'm not immortal like some people. This whole thing has made me realize I shouldn't expect to live a long, healthy life, and that I need to take care of things before I go. Dad didn't, and now we're all scrambling around trying to pick up the pieces. Since I am still your 'employer'," she puts up her fingers to make sarcastic quotations, "and not just your partner, your contract is still mine. What happens, per the contract and your... um, conditioning, if I die?"

"I would be compelled to do nothing else but search for a new employer. Eating, sleeping, drinking, none of that would be as important as finding someone else to hold the contract. It would be incredibly painful physically, because that is how the control is wired in me. It... would destroy me emotionally, as well, which is worse than either of those things."

"Good."

"Good?"

"No, not good. I just meant that means my idea is a good one. I'm going to put your name on the deed to the house. I'll have to check with Simms first to see if it's even legal. And, if you don't mind... if I die, find Gob. Tell him what happened, tell him to take your contract. He'll let you be as free as you can be. I'll write up a will and everything... hopefully, in this town, that counts for something."

"Amelie..."

"I love you so much. I can't let anything happen to you. Even if I didn't love you, I would still do this, I think. When I bought your contract, you became my responsibility. I just happened to fall in love. You're quite pleasant to be around, you see." She grins, breaking the tension in my chest. Now that my life has meaning, I don't want a life without her. She is my meaning. Even without the contract.

"You... are too good for me. You don't have to worry about this now. The... incident... only happened yesterday. You have all the time in the world to think, and to mourn."

"I know. And I will. But you know me - I have to prioritize." She crosses the room and embraces me, burying her face in my chest. "And if we ever get separated and you can't come find me for whatever reason, come here. Come to the Megaton house. I'll find you."

"Why would I ever not be able to find you? I am drawn to you, like... a magnet."

"I don't know. That, I don't want to think about. But with the Enclave in full swing, and the Brotherhood... anything is possible."

"You distrust the Brotherhood of Steel?"

"Yeah. Their motives are suspicious at best, and they could, can, and will take advantage of me for their own gain. Why? Do you not?"

"No, I do. I am just relieved that you do, as well."

"Anyway, my point is that in a weird situation, it won't be safe for you to come find me. Either of these guys would kill you on sight, because you're huge and strong and dangerous. So do me a favor," she looks deep into my eyes, "and keep yourself safe. I will always find you."

"I will. Partly because that was technically an order." 

She chuckles. "Shut up."

"Technically, that was an order, too. But I'm choosing to ignore it. With you, the lines of the contract are so blurry. You giving me so much free reign for so long has made it difficult to tell the difference sometimes."

"I try not to give you orders, but sometimes it happens. At least it's never bad, right?"

I laugh my deep, gravelly laugh. "Right. Let's go to bed, love. You have survived the worst time of your life, and you've earned some sleep."

* * *

The next few days pass with not much to speak of. Amelie cries on and off, seeking shelter in my arms every time. Every morning I boil water on the stove to draw her a lukewarm bath and wash her tears away, and every night I wrap myself around her to keep the pain at bay. She never wants to talk about it, and I never press her to. I sneak away when she sleeps to buy food and toiletries, and to take care of the dog. Wadsworth does it while we're gone, but refuses to do it while we're home. I figure that's fair enough.

Over breakfast on the fourth day, the life comes back into her eyes, and color touches her cheeks again all at once.

"I think... the worst of it is over. Thank you, Charon. For everything. You're good to me."

"For good or ill, mon cherie. So, now that you are feeling better... what would you like to do today?"

"I feel like a zombie inside. I want to go see if Moira has any nice dressy clothes for sale. Plus, if Vault 87 is as bad as they say, I'm gonna need a hazmat suit, and I'm pretty sure Moira still has one in stock."

"She does. I saw it yesterday. It might be expensive, though."

"We've got the caps." She pauses. "... Maybe I can rent it for a lower price. I don't want to drop too many on something I'll only use once, maybe twice. Speaking of... I want to head out tomorrow. Get this whole thing over with. The sooner we have the G.E.C.K., the sooner we start the purifier. Then I turn my back on the Brotherhood and we can move on with our lives."

"If that is what you wish. So... you feel like a zombie inside?"

"Oh, Charon, I didn't mean -"

"No, it's okay. I... wanted to make a very inappropriate joke, but I now realize it may not be a good time."

"By all means, go ahead. I could do with a laugh." Her brow frumples. "Or sex. That would be nice, too."

"In that case..." I walk around the table and kneel next to her, spreading her legs apart and pulling her close to me. She's only wearing underwear, a tank top and an old button-up shirt she bought for me months ago. The sight of her, combined with the new life in her eyes, stirs something in me that hasn't been stirred in almost a month. We've been too busy. "... My joke was going to be, I'm a zombie on the outside, so I could really make you feel some zombie on the inside."

She cracks up with teary, snotty, belly-laughter. "That is a good joke. And it's pretty sexy. And I guess I like dirty talk."

"I am about 200 years out of practice on that, but I will try to get better at it, if that's what you like," I say as I kiss between her thighs, gently stroking my hands up and down them. A low moan builds in her throat, and she leans into my kisses, stroking the back of my head with one hand.

"Ohhhhkay, sailor, save it for after I buy something pretty and... knee length. And then," she takes my face in her hands and kisses me deeply, brushing her tongue on my bottom lip, "you can rip it off me and fuck me sideways." She gets up and walks around me. I faceplant the chair, groaning. She snickers as she fades upstairs.

* * *

As I wait for Amelie to come back from Craterside Supply, I sift through her extensive magazine collection. I choose a Tumblers Today, thinking maybe I'd learn a thing or two.

The door cracks open and she peeks in. "Hey, close your eyes. Don't open them until I say so." The smirk I love to see creeps up on her face.

"Fine, mistress, I'll humor you." I cover my face with the magazine, and she laughs. She comes in and I hear scuffling, her pack dropping to the floor, and her too-big boots clunk across the living room.

"Okay, you can look." I drop the magazine, and then my jaw. She bought a blue poodle dress with white polka dots. The top is low-cut and sleeveless, showing off every muscle and scar she's earned in the wasteland. The look on my face makes her blush. "Can't forget the best part," she lifts up her dress - nothing on underneath. Her perfect womanhood in all its glory. She drops the hem and climbs in my lap.

"Oh, be still, my aging heart," I growl into her neck. She kisses me, hungrily, desperately, seeking the thing we've been missing for so many weeks - intimacy. In a heartbeat my pants are undone and down past my knees. Amelie positions herself over my cock, quivering with nerves and excitement. This is only our second time together this way, making love (though I suspect this particular situation will be a bit more primal than that).

She positions her entrance over my dick, and her warm wetness is irresistible. She lowers herself, slowly, taking full control - which is actually quite sexy. My entire shaft doesn't fit inside her, which explains the pain she felt last time. A tiny part of my brain makes a note to apologize for that later. For now, all I can possibly focus on is not losing my load prematurely as she slides up and down, stabilizing herself with both hands on my chest. Her face contorts and those green eyes roll back in her head as my cock hits her in ways no other position does. She finds a rhythm, pounding up and down, her ass in my hands, and she comes violently. I slowly rock my hips and ease her down, and before her face relaxes she starts riding me again, foregoing the rhythm she had and only going up and down, pushing me to the edge. When she pulls up, she rocks back and forth on my head - I lose my mind to the ecstasy and kiss and bite her everywhere I can possibly put my mouth; her lips, her neck, her breasts.

She cries out after a nipple bite and I stop, looking up at her, but she croons "No, no, it's okay. Come for me, Charon. Come with me," and her muscles tighten around me, and her legs twitch as she slams down one final time, and I let go inside her. I want to scream, I want to go feral, but her gentle moans against my neck and her hair tickling my face keep me grounded as I finish.

"God, I forgot how amazing you are. I so needed that," she says as she slides off my lap, slumping down next to me on the couch. I pull my pants back up, and pull her close to my chest.

"I'm sorry I didn't get to practice the dirty talk; you kind of surprised me by jumping my bones."

"I think it was just the one bone, actually," she grins. "I'm going to go wash up. Go do something fun, Charon. Get out of the house. You've been cooped up here for days because of me."

"It never bothered me. And I have gotten out of here when you slept to run errands. But I will go visit my dear friend Gob, and I'll buy myself a drink, because that is what every respected man in this town does after he fucks his woman."


	25. Chapter 25

When I find Gob he is as he always is: cleaning glasses with a very dirty rag and nervously looking over his shoulder. He never does anything wrong - he's smarter than that. But Moriarty will punish him, regardless.

"Hey, Charon. Can I get you something, or is this a business call?" Over the last few days, I've exclusively come to Gob and gone to Moira to get the supplies I need.

I eyeball the only other patron in the bar this early in the day - Billy Creel, half-asleep in an armchair, hunched over the book on his lap. Good. I need to talk to Gob without witnesses. "Can I get a whiskey and cola?" I settle down on a stool by the wall, far away from Billy and away from any wandering ears upstairs. Gob slides my glass across the bartop and I ignore the smears of grime on the outside - the drink tastes fine, that's what matters.

"What's with the social call?" Gob squints at me.

"Need to talk to you about something. Important." I side-eye Billy, making it clear I need it quiet.

"Moriarty's away. Nova's doing business. Now is as good a time as any."

"You know about my contract," I whisper. "Amelie has a... contingency plan. After her father's death and everything happening now, she's terrified something bad is going to happen. To her, or to me, I don't know. But she wants to make up a Will, and guess who's lucky enough to get me?" I grimace as the whiskey goes down.

"Me? She... trusts me? But I'm just a sla-"

"Don't. Use that word. You are her friend and the only other person she trusts in this entire wasteland to not fuck it up and ruin my life. If this ever happens, I will bring the contract here. Only I know where it is right now. I will give it to you, and you will become my employer. You will then put the contract back where it currently is for safekeeping, and we will go about our lives as normal."

"Fine by me. Tell her I'm touched. Please. Whatever she needs, I will do it."

"She's not going to die any time soon, Gob. Not if I can help it. But..." I grimace as another gulp goes down, burning my throat. "I appreciate it. I don't trust anyone else either."

Moriarty saunters his way back into the bar, and I feel the tingle of a watchful eye on the back of my neck.

"Ae, if it ain't Ugly and his friend, Uglier! Been a while. And how is your young lass? She come to her senses, want a real man yet?"

"Go fuck yourself, Colin. I don't feel like socializing today." I down the rest of my drink and throw 30 caps on the bartop, escaping the bar swiftly.

* * *

Amelie sits cross-legged on the floor at the coffee table, desperately scribbling words on pieces of paper she must have salvaged from old books. A huge smile crosses her face when I come in.

"Hey, that was fast. You left, like, ten minutes ago."

"I saw Gob. I told him about your plan. I also saw Moriarty, and I told him to go fuck himself."

"Ah, so a productive day for you, then!" Her smile, I'm happy to see, reaches her eyes.

"And what are you working on?"

She pushes the paper towards me. "My Last Will and Testament. We had these, all official-like in the Vault. No one ever had many possessions, but the few we did have, it was good to protect them. Since Dad was the doctor, and the doctor is the one who deals with the dead, I saw a ton of these in my life. This is as official as I could make it seem. I figured I can go see Simms later, and bring him the deed to the house, too."

I read the paper she thrusts at me:

I, Amelie Lynn, of Megaton, formerly of Vault 101, of the Capital Wasteland, declare that this, my last will and testament, will be the final word of my life and what happens to any possessions, plans, or ideas that belong to me after my demise.  
My house in Megaton will go to my friend, partner, and lover, Charon the ghoul, of Underworld, Capital Wasteland. The deed to the house has been updated to reflect this.  
Everything in the house, up to and including caps, food, electronics, furniture, bobbleheads, and Dogmeat the dog, shall be included as part of the house, and therefore will belong to Charon.  
Charon may do what he likes with any property inside our suite in Tenpenny Tower, as well.  
Charon's contract of employment will go to Gob, of Moriarty's Saloon in Megaton, and to no one else. If anyone but Gob the ghoul takes the contract, I will come back to haunt them.  
This Will shall be signed by myself, Charon, and Lucas Simms, sheriff of Megaton, and is as legally binding as a document could possibly be in the Wasteland.  
x _____  
x _____  
x _____

"Amelie, this means a lot to me, but this is a very big commitment -"

"First of all," she slides the Will back across the coffee table towards herself, "I'll be dead. So it won't really affect me too much that you get all my stuff. Second of all, I love you. I would-" She stops suddenly, blushing like mad and dropping her eyes.

"You would...?"

"I... would marry you. Officially and forever. If that was a bigger deal out here, I would. But since what we have now is about as good as it gets, I'm happy with it."

I cross the room and take her into my arms, bridal style. She squeals and giggles, throwing her arms around my neck and kissing me fervently. "You truly would marry the likes of me?"

Those deep green eyes look into mine, seeking something. "Of course. In a different world, where being husband and wife actually meant something, I would absolutely want to be Mrs. Charon... uhh. Do you... have a last name?"

"Not anymore. I haven't had a last name since before the War. I think I've actually forgotten."

"Well, that's okay. We don't need last names. I don't have one, either. I never did."

"Mr. Charon and Mrs. Amelie it is, then." I drop to the couch and hold her for a while, softly pressing kisses to her temple every so often. Her heart races against mine. "Are you alright? Your heart is beating faster than a hummingbird."

"Yeah, I'm fine. Declarations of love have always been my forte, you see," she says sarcastically. But she kisses me and slides back down to the floor by the coffee table.

We sit in comfortable silence for a while, her working on her Will and me playing with her hair - it relaxes her. When I break the silence to ask "What were marriages like in your vault?", she starts a bit.

"Boring. People fell in love, courted for a while, and if they decided they wanted to marry, they signed papers in the Overseer's office if he determined that their genes were compatible. Which they usually were, because the vault was so desperate for new life. That's why they let me and Dad in when I was a baby. We were brand new genes, ripe for the breeding. Anyway, so after signing papers and being declared husband and wife, they could choose to move into one of their living spaces or be assigned a new one. Then they were expected to have at least one child within the first five years of marriage."

"That sounds very..."

"Sterile? Lacking romance? Yeah. But, at least we were allowed to fall in love. And allegedly, the only time an Overseer ever didn't approve of a marriage was in cases where it made sense, like between family members whose genes could have caused issues, or if someone had a serious medical condition that could be passed on that would affect quality of life. That only happened once or twice, as far as anybody knew."

"Did you ever feel... love, for anyone in the vault?"

She snort-laughs. "God, no. I grew up with the same 30 kids my whole life, and all the boys made me want to tear my hair out. Some of the girls were okay, but girls can't breed with girls, so that was out of the question for anybody. I'm sure I could have forced myself to be happy with a couple of them, when I had to. It was extremely frowned upon to be 30 with no spouse or kids, or both. But I could never have loved anyone down there, not like I love you."

"And you know that with me, you can never have children, yes?"

"I," she hesitates. "I actually can't have kids either. I assumed ghouls are the same, so I never brought it up. It didn't seem important, if we were never going to be able to do it anyway."

"How do you know this? You're so young."

"Well. You know how women have their periods, right? Please tell me I don't have to give you the talk."

I chuckle. "I know how puberty works, yes. I am old, not stupid."

"Well, who knows! Anyway, so... mine never came. I was 16 before I pulled up the courage to tell my dad. He had a nurse check me out, and they did all sorts of scans and tests, and apparently nothing in there works right. I'm an inhospitable environment." My eyebrows knit together. "No, don't make the sad face. I'm okay with it, obviously. I've had a few years to think about it. I never really wanted kids, and according to all my friends, I'm not missing out on the period front. It sucks, apparently. Did you really never notice I never had to deal with that? We've been together for ten months now."

"I did notice, but I thought you were being discreet... or something. Back in my day, women were very private about those sorts of things."

"Ah, that actually makes sense. Well, nope, I'm as barren as the day is long. Look at us, Charon. Two infertile weirdos, finding love in the post-apocalypse. Kinda perfect somehow, isn't it?"

I plant a kiss on her forehead. "Kind of perfect."

* * *

Lucas Simms reads Amelie's Will with a raised eyebrow. But he signs it nonetheless. And the deed to the house, where Amelie has made an X at the bottom of her addendum for him to sign.

"I appreciate this, Simms. I feel better knowing that if something ever happens to me, Charon doesn't get the shit end of the stick. And, please, don't tell anyone about the 'contract' part of my Will. It's more work than it's worth to explain."

"Secret's safe with me. I don't involve myself in other people's business if I can help it. I'm only doing this for you because of the things you've done for this town, and because you're a good kid. Wouldn't do it for anyone else."

"Thank you so much. If you ever need me to do anything, let me know or slide a note under my door if we're gone. We're heading out tomorrow, and it might be for a while."

"Might? So you don't know?"

"Nope. We're still running errands for Project Purity."

"Just be safe, kid. You bring a lot of business to my town, and I'd like to keep things as comfortable as they are" Simms walks away and Amelie winks at me.

"He loves me. I can tell." I snort. "Eh, at least that's done and over with. I feel so much better now, knowing you're taken care of."

We climb the hilly path to our house and Amelie stumbles on a 2 x 4 of wood, and I catch her by the back of her jacket before she can tumble back down the hill, and plop her back down on her feet.

"I wish I could say you don't have to take care of me. Sometimes I wish we were normal," I say as I clasp her hands in one of mine and we get back into the house.

"We're about as normal as we possibly could be, Charon. A 200 year old ghoul and a young, previously vault-dwelling smoothskin, killing stuff, raising a dog and owning a house together, occasionally wreaking havoc on bigots and mutants and assholes..." she grins, "No one is normal. Been out here almost a year, and I've come to observe a few things."

"It's been that long already? Wait," I grab her Pip-Boy arm and navigate to the map, which also determines the date and time, "It's July 13th."

"It's my birthday? Oh my God, this is so weird. I never thought I would make it to 20, not once I came out here. It's weirder that you remembered after all this time."

I kiss the top of her head softly. "Shut up. What would you like to do for your birthday?"

"I... don't know. The only real special birthday I had was 10 years ago, and that was just because at age 10 you get your Pip-Boy. Someone would bake a cake, you get your Pip-Boy, and you relax with your friends and family. That was the year Dad got me a BB gun and him and Jonas taught me how to shoot..." her eyes become sad. Two people she loved, two people now dead in the name of science, in the name of change.

"Hey," I kiss her gently. "No sad eyes on your birthday. How about I make you dinner, and then... I think I have something in mind for dessert."

"Ooh, birthday sex?"

"Yes, that too. That will be the post-dessert dessert."

* * *

I use small cups to make ice, buy brahmin milk from Leo Stahl, and break into our stash of Sugar Bombs (Amelie hoards them like they're a lifeline - she sells them to Murphy, the ghoul who uses them to make UltraJet. How he does this, I wish I knew) while Amelie keeps herself occupied with some magazines in the living room. 

Ice cream. I don't know if Amelie has ever had it, but if she has, it's been a while. The sugar bombs, crushed up into powder, and the brahmin milk will be sweet together, and if I remember correctly, you can put the mixture in a bag, inside another bag of ice, and it will harden into ice cream over time. I can only hope it actually works. I only have so many tools at my disposal.

With that preparing, I make my woman her favorite - pork and beans, mac and cheese, and a Nuka-Cola. I lay her feast in front of her on the coffee table and she claps her hands together once, dropping her magazine next to her on the couch.

"Aw, Charon! All my favorites. Thank you so much. You're amazing."

"It's your birthday, and you have had a very tough week. This is the least I can do."

We mow down on our dinner when Amelie asks, "When is your birthday? I can't believe I never asked before. I just never thought about it, there were always more important things to think about than birthdays."

I pause to think for a moment, trying to remember. "I finished school in June, turned 18 around month after that, and enlisted in the military soon after that... so it must have been late July?"

"You don't know for sure?"

"I haven't celebrated a birthday since my 19th. The last one before the Institute took me for training. So it's been about, what, 210 years? I suppose I forgot the specific date over time."

"210 years... I can't even imagine that. I can't imagine going through what you went through at just 19." I raise an eyebrow at her, "Oh. You know what I mean! I always had a weird life, vault or no vault, and being out here instead of in there actually suits me. Meanwhile, I can only imagine you came from a very safe place before the military, let alone being taken away and brainwashed for indentured servitude. I will never fully understand what you went through. ... What year were you born?"

"2048."

She laughs, mirthlessly. "So, aside from the 200 years since the apocalypse, you're exactly ten years older than me, give or take a few days. That's so..."

"Weird? Gross? Repulsive? Makes me feel like a disgusting old man?"

She reaches across the table to pat my cheek. "Hey. Your age isn't important in that way. I do think you're overdue for a nice birthday celebration, but this doesn't bother me. You're not Burke, who was clearly well into his 40's wanting to fuck a 19 year old virgin. You are the man I love who loves me too, and out here, what difference does 10 years make?"

"To be fair, it's 210. Just because I effectively stopped aging does not mean I stopped... being."

"Fine, fine. You win. You're a grumpy old man. But I still love you," she grins.

I frown. "Eat your dinner. You still have a surprise coming."

The ice cream is more like a milkshake - stuck somewhere between frozen treat and slushy milk. But it's sweet, and still enjoyable, so I pour the mixture into two small glasses.

"And now presenting," I declare, but it sounds ridiculous in my gruff voice, "for what is probably the first time ever in the Capital Wasteland..." I sweep the cups in front of her face, and her eyebrows knit together in confusion, "... ice cream."

"Ice cream! I had this once in the vault, but it was this weird freeze-dried stuff. Not good. How on earth did you make this?" She says, taking a glass from me.

"Brahmin milk and sugar bombs. It was a sudden stroke of genius," we both take a sip - it's exactly like a milkshake. Sure, it could have used a real ice cream maker and a few more ingredients, but it's pretty good for something that shouldn't have worked. It's sweet and frosty and strangely refreshing. Amelie drinks it down quickly, too quickly.

"Don't drink it so fast, you're going to get a-"

"Agh, headache!" She pushes the heel of her hand into her forehead. "This sucks, what the hell? Ice cream is mean."

I chuckle. "It's called brainfreeze."

"Well, it hurts. Ah," She removes her hand from her head and drinks down the last dregs from the glass. "Worth it, though. That was really good, Charon. You'll have to show me how to make that."

"I will, when all of this Enclave malarkey is over and we can move on with our lives."

"Oh, God." She buries her head in her hands, "I just realized my dad's body is still at the Jefferson. I mean... I hope it is. That nothing ate him. He always joked that when he died I should break us out of the vault and send his body down the river in a flaming boat. I don't think I'm gonna do that, but I can at least give him a proper funeral."

"Then we will," I say as I take her hands in mine. "As soon as all of this is over."


	26. Chapter 26

The children of Little Lamplight are a pleasant surprise - well-mannered, generous, and politely curious. All except their Mayor, a boy named MacCready. I try to give him the benefit of the doubt; he's probably had a hard life with no parents and no discipline, and he's what, ten? I make a mental note to check on him in a few years. If he's still a brat, I'm setting him straight.

The children invite us to their community dinner and offer to let us stay the night, but Amelie brushes it away. "Thank you guys, but I have to do a quick errand first. I'll come back to visit and we can do some trading, alright?"

"Are you gonna bring the tall guy?"

"Do you wanna buy my Wazer Wifle?"

"If you see any teddy bears, will you bring them for me?"

"Can you take a bath first next time?"

Amelie chuckles at their questions. It seems we may be some of the nicest 'mungos', or adults, they've had in a while. "Yes, Charon will always be with me. Sure, Billy, we can talk about your... wazer wifle. Yes, I'll bring you all the teddy bears I find, Bumble. And you, Princess, don't smell so great yourself. Now, guys, we gotta go but I promise we'll be back soon."

A young teenager named Joseph comes out of the crowd to lead us to a huge cavern, and at the end of the cavern is a large metal door. He stops at a terminal. "I'm gonna leave this door unlocked so you can come back, but if you aren't back tomorrow, I gotta close it. Okay?"

"That's fine, Joseph. Stay safe, alright, kid?"

He unlocks the huge door and the mechanism inside clangs to life, probably for the first time ever. We crouch and step through, guns at the ready. Who knows what we'll face in here?

* * *

Turns out, sentient super mutants are what we face in here. They keep saying things like "need more green people, make like us" and their words send chills down my spine. More like them? How do they know?

Using the terminals in the lab area, we find out how, and also why, super mutants evolved differently than ghouls. And that's exactly it - evolution. Ghoulification is more like... a disease. I am still human, somewhere inside me, but I am affected by symptoms - the lack of aging, the missing skin, the milky eyes, the patchy hair. Super mutants evolved from humans and may as well be a completely different species. Vault 87 was used to experiment on unsuspecting humans, and Vault-Tec pumped evolutionary viruses into their bodies, mutating them not only physically, but mentally. Amelie reads through terminals to me in a low voice, and I swear she ages 10 years after she's done. What Vault-Tec has done... it's inhuman.

We meet a surprise somewhere in the vault - Fawkes, a gentle giant super mutant, too smart for his own good so his own kind locked him up. Amelie tells him why we're here - the G.E.C.K. We release him from his prison and he shows us the path, offering to retrieve it for us, as its containment room has enough radiation to cook a human in a heartbeat. He lumbers off to retrieve it, and I can't help but grumble that I easily could have done it, as well.

His thundering footfalls announce his return, and he hands Amelie the G.E.C.K. His parting words are "As promised, here's the G.E.C.K. I hope it's worth it. I'm afraid this is where you and I part company. I'll find my way out of this place, don't worry. Maybe we'll meet again somewhere in the Wasteland." He stomps off, and Amelie grips the G.E.C.K. like a fucking lifeline.

"Thank you, Fawkes. I hope I run into you again," she calls after him. His thunderous steps echo down the hallway, and Amelie turns to me. "We fucking got it, Charon. We won." Her eyes glisten and she wraps the G.E.C.K. tightly in a spare piece of clothing, tucking it into the bottom of her pack safely. "Now how the hell do we get out of here? Fawkes went that way..." She follows the path he took, but the door he went through is now locked.

"I saw a hallway down this way. Come on. Perhaps we have to retrace our steps, but we may be able to find another way."

We follow her Pip-Boy's map to a large, unfamiliar-looking ventilation room, and all at once, many things happen at the same time and in slow motion: Spotlights from the ceiling click on and focus on Amelie; she whips around to me and shouts my name; the butt of a gun nails me just above my nose, nearly knocking me out; and four Enclave soldiers rappel from the ceiling and capture her - two grabbing her arms, the others grabbing her plasma rifle and her pack. I involuntarily collapse, my face landing in a pool of my own blood. Stars explode behind my eyes and I beg my brain to keep them open, to get up and save her. I see her thrash and struggle against their power armor, but it will never work. A soldier's armored boot stands on my back, keeping me down.

The world catches up with itself and moves high-speed. Amelie catches my eye and screams to me, her voice filled with desperation and anguish, tears streaming down her face.

"Run! Charon, run!" A soldier stabs what is probably Med-X into her neck and she passes out. All of this happens in seconds - in mere seconds my life, my reason for being, taken from me.

The soldier removes his heavy boot from my back and kicks me once in the ribs, hard enough to probably break a few. "You aren't worth the bullets, ghoul. You can live. We might need you for bargaining, anyway," and he stomps out, leaving me to my fate.

They're gone. All trace of the Enclave, gone from this place. What the fuck do I do now? Amelie gave me orders, the strictest orders I've ever gotten from her: go home. Live my life. She's not dead, so I just... wait. But what do I do about my heart? It's a million miles away, impossibly far, with her, in whatever fucking torture chamber they're going to keep her in. The place where they'll interrogate, intimidate, and terrify her until she cracks. She doesn't know anything, but they took her, so they must think she has all the answers. Otherwise, they would have just shot us both on sight and taken the G.E.C.K.

We were just here, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

We should never have come here. We should have let them win and found a way to stop them later. This method has only gotten her captured, and, possibly, worse later when they realize she has nothing they want. Her damn father never told her a thing unless it involved cleaning up the Jefferson. I mourned the bastard for the girl I love, and now, in this moment, I would kill him myself if it meant she was safe. I would tear myself in two to get her back to me in one piece.

I'll have to settle for following my orders.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Don't miss chapter 26 I posted earlier today, and please see my notes at the end of the chapter!)

Three weeks pass. In those weeks, I trudge home to Megaton, weary and heavy-hearted. I take care of the dog, the house, the errands. I check the safe Amelie stored my contract in a million times to ensure it is still safe. I pay a caravan trader to get word to the Citadel that Amelie was captured, and there was nothing I could do.

I tried.

I read every book and magazine we had ever collected. I reorganize our lockers five, six, ten times. I periodically buy all the Nuka-Cola in town and fill the fridge, knowing that when Amelie does return - and she will - she'll be happy to see it. I do everything I can possibly think of to distract myself, and it still hurts. But she's not dead - I can feel it.

Three weeks pass before I hear shouting by the Megaton entrance gate. I rush out, shotgun ready in case it's another raider attack, and it's her - filthy, broken... and missing part of her arm. Her vault suit is singed all the way up her right sleeve, and some of her stomach is visible through the torso of the suit. In her left hand, her plasma rifle held loosely, her pack dangling from her shoulder. I run to her desperately, holstering the shotgun when my hands threaten to drop it. I hold her tightly to me as if I was drowning and she was my air.

"Charon," she mumbles, and collapses against me. I look to Simms with wild eyes and he must read the pain in them, because he lunges forward to grab her pack and rifle before they clatter down the hill. Amelie leans into me more and I scoop her up bridal-style, carrying her to the house, Simms trailing me. I gently lay her on the couch and he drops her things by the door.

"You let me know if you need anything. It's gonna be a long road for her now."

He slams the door behind him and I mutter "It always was."

While she sleeps, I inspect her new... stump. It's not as bad as it looked - her hand and up to just above her wrist are gone on her right arm. The end of the stump is sort of singed, but not bleeding. Could be worse. It must have been one good plasma shot, to do this. She's out cold, so I clean it as best I can and inspect the rest of her. Her bare stomach peering through her vault suit is bruised and scraped, but otherwise unharmed. It's strange that she wears the vault suit - it's so precious to her, a final memory of the place she grew up, she never wore it before. But I know her - she never does anything without a reason. I'll have to remember to ask her about it when she awakens.

I remove her Pip-Boy for the first time in... probably ever. It unclasps at the bottom, and two lines of pins hold it in place in her skin on the top and bottom of her forearm; the pins read her vitals. Where the pins came out, small dots of blood begin to form. I wrap her arm and carry on taking the Pip-Boy upstairs, tuning in to Galaxy News. Maybe the disc jockey has some insight.

"Hey, Capital Wasteland! I heard through the grapevine, kids, that a certain Raven Rock has officially been wiped off the map, and by who else but our own Lone Wanderer? Details are still coming in, but this much I know, listeners: the Enclave. Is. Dead."

I drop the Pip-Boy to the bed as one of the swing songs begins to play. She destroyed the Enclave's home base? Completely by herself? I have no doubts about her skills. None at all. She's strong, smart, and healthy, much more so than people raised in the wasteland. She's also too charming for her own damn good, and could probably talk herself out of most bad situations. I'm... impressed. I'm proud. She's just one person. One tiny person with a heart of gold and a plasma rifle.

She wakes up with a start after a few hours. She moves to run her eyes with her right hand, but nothing is there. "Dammit." She spots me, sitting in my favorite chair across from the couch, and her whole face lights up. I crack open a bottle of Nuka-Cola for her (water would probably be better, but I need to keep her happy first) and she drinks it down in seconds. "Well, Charon," she says between gulps, "I guess I have some 'splainin to do."

"So they captured me. You know, you were there. I was knocked out pretty good, having never done Med-X before, so for the first week or so I had no idea where I was. I just knew that it was the Enclave, that I was in deep trouble, and that it hurt. So bad. The needles, the drugs, the knives... Anything to get information out of me. Information I didn't even have! Or so I thought. As I was on my way here I realized I did have the information they wanted - a code. They had the purifier, they had the G.E.C.K., and all they needed was the code dad installed when they started all of this 20 years ago."

"And what was it?"

"2-1-6. 21:6. I am the Alpha and Omega, blah blah, my dad said it all the time. It's been bored into me since birth. I knew it all along. Knowing that, we actually can start the purifier, Charon." Her eyes are wild, crazy. "Anyway, so they tried to torture it out of me for a while. How long have I been gone?"

"About three weeks, give or take a day."

"Ah. It felt like... months. So, they realized I knew nothing, and tortured me anyway. When physical torture didn't work, they tried using dad's death against me, and I almost cracked. Not that I could tell them anything, but I wanted to scream and beg for death instead. But I kept thinking about you, and I knew I had to keep going."

My blood boils, but I can only sit and listen more. I know how this story ends - with the Enclave obliterated and her, safe, in front of me.

"Then the President himself, our dear John Henry Eden, discovered I'd been there for that long. He ordered my release, and the release of my stuff, on the condition that I go straight to his office and didn't kill anybody on the way. Fine. I go. He wants me to take the FEV, the virus we read about in 87. He tells me I should play nice with the Brotherhood and then when the time comes, install the FEV in the purifier. That the wasteland needs to be purged before it can flourish. And I initiated the self-destruct, turned on a stealth boy, and blew the entire motherfucker to smithereens." Her remaining hand doesn't stop moving while she talks - it flutters to her hair, her face, her fingers tap on her boot. She tries to use her Pip-Boy and panics when it's not there. "Where is it? Where is my Pip-Boy? Did I leave it behind -"

"No, no, I took it upstairs to check the radio while you slept. I'm sorry, I'll get it," and I start to stand.

She visibly relaxes. "No, that's okay." She holds up the stump, "Can't use it anyway. I guess I'll have to get used to it on my right arm. That'll be weird."

"Now I know your story. But how the hell did you lose the arm?"

"It's just a tiny part of my arm, Charon. I still have most of it." She scratches on a spot on her neck - it's raw, the top few layers of skin worn away. Then I notice her wild eyes are gaunt and sunken into her face. Psycho withdrawal. Fuck. I'll have to take her to Doc Church; he's the only one who can cure an addiction like this and leave the rest of her intact. "On my way out some fucker nailed me good in the split second between one stealth boy wearing off, and another kicking on. If he'd gotten me another few inches to the left I'd be a toasty pile of goo right now."

"And why the vault suit?"

She throws her head back and laughs. "Symbolism, of course. I put it on when Eden released me. I wanted everyone who saw me to remember that I'm just a kid from the vault. Virtually harmless. I needed them to see me and not suspect a thing. And then, of course, after it became clear that I was bringing upon the destruction of all they knew and loved, I wanted them to know how wrong they were. To know how dangerous someone can be regardless of where they came from. And if they thought that a few weeks of torture would be enough to break me, they were dead wrong." She giggles, almost a little maniacally. "Ha, dead wrong. Get it? Because they're all dead."

"I get the joke," I say, and I can't keep the heavy worry out of my voice.

"No, no, Charon, I'm okay. Don't be worried. I'm gonna be okay eventually. I've only been back a few hours and I'm coming down real hard. Of course I'm a little... off."

* * *

Doc Church injects Amelie with something that will flush out her system of any drug and clean her addiction over the course of the next day, at no cost. It surprises me, until he hikes up the price of his check-up on her stump, and I know he is not a changed man.

"Looks like the plasma cauterized it instantly, which is good. Woulda bled out otherwise, you never woulda made it back here. Keep it clean, scrub that burnt skin off over the next few days, and it should be fine."

I drop a sack of 500 caps on his desk. "Thanks, Doc." Amelie steps out and I lean closer to him, "Could you keep the... addiction part to yourself? With everything that just happened, the last thing we need is people thinking she's a junkie by choice. I just don't think she could handle it right now." He shrugs in a consenting manner, and I leave. I have to half-carry her up the hill to ours house, my hand on the small of her back guiding her. She will feel woozy for a while after the injection - her body is working hard to clear her system. I must ensure she not get hurt. She will never get hurt again.

* * *

Amelie secures her Pip-Boy on her right arm, wincing as the pins take their place in her skin. "God, that's the longest I've ever gone without this thing since I got it."

"You know, most people in the wasteland don't have a personal computer tied into their body 24/7," I smirk.

"I bet more people would if they could! Who wouldn't want a constant vitals readout, mapping system, and radio capabilities at every waking hour? Oh! There was something I wanted to do now that the Enclave is gone, but, y'know," she waves the stump, "Couldn't use my Pip-Boy." She tunes to Enclave radio, and where there were once banal self-fellating messages from President Eden, there's only radio silence. Faint static leaks out of the speakers, and it's wonderful.

"You really did it," I mutter.

"I really, really did," she says around a huge grin. "And did you know Eden was a computer? Not even a real dude."

"I kind of guessed. He'd been president for well over the 50 years I've been in the Capital Wasteland, and nothing had changed about him. I assumed he was, at the very least, a synthetic human."

"Oh, like Harkness. No, Eden was legitimately a computer with... I guess a brain? A consciousness? It was super weird. Oh! And guess who I saw after I escaped?" I give her a questioning look. "Fawkes! He heard word of what was happening at Raven Rock and traveled with the Brotherhood to get there. When I got out, it was like an all-out war, and Fawkes helped me get away from it all and let the Brotherhood deal with the rest. He said he'd be just outside Underworld in the museum if we ever wanted to visit."

"How... nice of him." And I was stuck here with my thumb up my ass. She senses my tone.

"Oh, Charon. I'm sorry. Having you come here... it was my one last act of mercy. I had to keep you safe above all else, especially when I never saw them capture you when they did me. And if you were here, you were safe," she takes my face in her hand, "That is all I wanted. You're honor bound to protect me at all costs, but staying alive is more important than coming to my rescue. Especially when I handled it just fine!"

"But what if you had died!" My temper flares, and I can't reel it back in.

"You would have been safe! We had a whole contingency plan thought out!"

"No, what would have happened to me? To my heart? Do you not understand that I love you and if you had died and I never got to fucking hold you, kiss you, or even say goodbye that it would destroy me every day for the rest of my life?" Her eyes fill with tears. I bury my head in my hands.

"I... I'm sorry," her voice wavers. "I guess... I didn't realize how much you care about me. You've lived for so long... a part of me thinks, or thought... that I'm just a tiny blip in the radar of your life. I believe that you love me, but what if it doesn't matter in the long run?"

"Even if I outlive you by 200 years, I will never stop loving you. You have made that deep of an impact on my life that you are not some 'blip'. You are my life. You are the woman I am meant to be with, and it's a fucking sick joke on me that I'll live forever, and you won't." My teeth grind together and my voice wavers. She stares at me, doe-eyed, tears silently streaming down her face, and leans forward to kiss me softly.

"I'm sorry," she says, gripping my chin, "that I don't get it. Charon, all of this... can we just say that right now, none of that matters? I'm here, I'm alive, and God willing I will be for a while still," she sniffles. "We can worry about the finer details of my death later. I'm still kinda fucked up and I love you and I just want to get better. This has been the longest month of my life. My dad died. I got kidnapped. I killed... a lot of people and felt no remorse. My body is fighting off infection and addiction and I haven't properly slept since we left this place to go to 87. Can we please, please put this argument on hold? I just... I can't do it right now."

I curl my arms around her and pull her into my chest. "I was upset. I'm sorry. We don't have to discuss this again. These are my fears, the things I couldn't stop thinking about while you were gone. They don't matter now. Your well-being is more important. I have been tortured to the brink a few times before. I understand."

She freezes on top of me. "This will never happen again. To either of us. Never again. I'll slaughter the world before I let it happen ever again."

We sit in silence, who knows for how long. She falls asleep, snoring softly, sleeping peacefully for the first time in far too long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So, a couple things: Finally caught up here with what I have on ff.net, yay! Also, I'm curious - how do you pronounce Amelie when you read it? I don't wanna say how I pronounce it, because I don't want to ruin any one else's pronunciation, but I'm curious. Thanks for reading! <3)


	28. Chapter 28

We take a few quiet days to ourselves, to just be together. And when she feels better from the whirlwind of chems that were coursing through her system, she wakes me up by kissing and nipping at my neck until I peer one open eye at her.

"Feeling better, are we?"

She kisses down to my collarbone, my chest, my stomach. She slides a finger under the waistband of my shorts and peeks up at me for consent. I catch the glint in her eye and pull her closer to flip us over. The shock on her face alone is worth it. I slowly drag one finger over her exposed breast, eliciting a soft whimper. I roll her nipple between my fingers and her face flushes, her eyes roll back in her head.

"Oh, Charon.."

"Yes, Mistress?"

She takes a shaky breath, "I need it. I need you."

"Is that an order?" I nip at her earlobe.

She laughs between a moan, and whispers, "Make love to me, Charon." The pure lust in her voice makes me weak.

I pull down her panties and circle her sensitive bud with the pad of my thumb. She throws her head back and pants heavily, and I slide a finger into her wet entrance. I slide in, and out, tantalizingly slowly until she cries out, grabbing my hand to stop me.

"Hey, big guy," she pants, "Save some for the big finale."

I hold myself over her, positioning the head of my dick against her warm entrance. "Ready?," I whisper into her ear, sending shivers throughout her body.

"Yes," she whispers back. I push into her, slowly, and she's slick and wet, but tight. We move our hips against each other, agonizingly slow until we find a rhythm, a pressure point. I fuck her, my beautiful woman, until she can do nothing but silently breathe my name into my neck and dig her nails into my back. She comes around me, tightening so hard it brings me over the edge and I bury myself deep within her for one final thrust. After a few minutes, wondering where all my muscles disappeared to, I slide out of her and pull her against my chest.

We lay in our bed, naked and sweaty, and she chuckles against my mouth. "I kept dreaming about that while I was gone. Drove me crazy. I'm glad it's really that good and I wasn't just losing my mind."

I scoff and roll her off of me. "I do what I can, ma'am. Now go back to sleep, you filthy thing."

"Mm, we do have a big day tomorrow."

"Do we now?" We hadn't done much but walk around town, spending our caps and laying low.

"I've put off dealing with the Brotherhood for too long. I just want all of this over with as soon as possible. I figure if we leave early we can get to Rivet City and sleep the night before we waltz into," she yawns heartily, "God-knows-what. Night, love." Pet names? This is a new development... and I think I like it.

* * *

The trek to Rivet City is painfully uneventful. Being cooped up for so long was hard on a person like me, who loves to kill things every so often, and now that I'm out of the house... there's nothing to kill. Some bloatflies, a mirelurk, sure... but nothing too exciting.

Harkness greets us warmly at the bridge. He won't soon forget how we helped him once, all those months ago, and protected him from a crazy old Institute coot.

Amelie rents us a room at the Hotel, and Vera Weatherly, with sad eyes, gives her a huge discount for the night. Word really does travel. Amelie drops her things on the bed and pulls out a sack of caps, easily 500. "Wanna go to the bar?"

"Sure," I say, a little worried that she thinks 500 caps is a reasonable amount of money to take to a bar, but who am I to turn down a drink?

I closely follow her through the rusty old ship, more like a shadow than her partner. As we reach the Muddy Rudder's screeching door, Amelie starts saying how "Gob's drinks are good, don't get me wrong. But they're never cold enough and they're too strong for my taste. At least down here, I know my drink will be -" She stops in her tracks so suddenly that I bump into her from behind.

"Amelie?" She stares straight ahead, her wide eyes filling up with tears.

Her voice wavers and cracks, but she chokes out one word.

"Butch."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: There were a couple things I wanted to address: I don't know if this is a common thing to do, but I made a tumblr specifically for this fic, which you can find at ameliethewanderer. Mostly it's me reblogging Fallout 3 and 4 fanart, but if it had a few people following it I think I would start posting little things about this fic that don't quite belong here, or trashed ideas, or little smut moments that I didn't want in the fic but were good enough to keep around. The other thing is that I realized that in the beginning of this, Amelie wielded a plasma pistol, and I've since accidentally changed it to a plasma rifle... oops. Consider it a mistake on my part, because her rifle is A3-21's. Anyway, as always, thanks SO much for reading, and being supportive, and for all the lovely reviews. They seriously make every day happy. :*)


	29. Chapter 29

A tan, but sunless young man, Amelie's age, in a grubby leather jacket stands in the corner of the bar, smoking a cigarette. He meets her gaze, and his face lights up. "Ame," he says with reverence as they cross the distance and embrace each other. The moment is so intimate in a way I can't understand. Not romantic or sexual, no, but... the power of seeing someone you never again thought you would... it grips you deeply. I have to look away from them; his arms wrapped around her waist and hers clasped around his neck... it burns me inside. But I know this is no romantic gesture - she has told me many a tale of this Butch, and while I believe he used to be a snot-nosed kid, to have the courage to leave the safety of the Vault and make it all the way to Rivet City... I'm impressed.

"Butch," Amelie says while wiping her face of tears, "What the hell are you doing out here? What  
happened?"

He hesitates. "Sit down, kid. I have a story to tell."

* * *

"After you left it was fuckin' mayhem back home. The Overseer totally freaked and said the door could never open again or we all die. Us kids, and even some of the adults agreed that was bull. We wanted the door open for good, for trading, or so like for me, I could get the fuck outta there. I wanted to leave and make my own name out here, do something other than bein' the fuckin' Vault barber. Amata sent a radio signal out to you a few weeks ago when it got bad, hoping if you came you could talk some sense into the bastard. But you never came. So we revolted. Amata is Overseer now, with much help from her security force, and Alphonse is locked up. The door is open for trade, and I left. My mom... died. A few months ago. So there's nothin' there for me now. 'Cept Amata, but she's too busy to sleep with the likes of me anymore anyway."

Amelie chokes on her drink at that. "What! You guys were fucking?"

"Hell yeah! Everything changed after you left, kid. I changed. Stopped being a total douche-hole after you saved my mom, and Amata was stressed and frustrated and needed to take it out on someone. And the Butch-man delivered," he says proudly.

Amelie laughs, "Okay, I have a few questions, but the most important one is what the hell are you doing here? In this bar, on this rusty old shitheap of a ship?"

Butch becomes quiet, just for a moment. "The first thing I saw when I walked out that door, after my corneas stopped melting, was that big junk heap, uh... Megatown?"

"Megaton. That's where Charon and I live."

He spares one glance at me and continues - I don't mind. He doesn't recoil. "Started walkin' toward it and came across this crazy caravan guy. He could tell I was fresh meat, lost out of my mind and blind as shit. Told me about this place, how everything I'd need here is indoors. Safe as can be. Traveled here with him a week ago and never left. He taught me about the bottlecaps thing, so I started my own barber sho here to make my way.They told me their last barber turned out like him," he nudged his head in my direction, "and apparently they gotta problem with that. Now, I don't gotta problem with it, but I'm not gonna say it doesn't work in my favor that they do. Pretty good gig though, huh? Way more exciting than being the Vault barber." He downed the last of his drink with a grin on his face.

"I gotta say, Butch, I'm impressed. I never would have thought you had it in you."

He nearly interrupts her with dark eyes. "Why didn't you come, Ame? I know your Pip-Boy would have picked up the signal, especially knowing you live right next door to the damn vault."

She pauses, biting her lip. "A lot has happened, Butch. Especially in the last two months. My dad died," his face breaks, "I got kidnapped, I lost an arm... I've been busy. I'm sorry."

His eyes and his smile are soft and understanding when he looks at her. "'s okay, kid. I can see you've been busy. You're so tan."

She chuckles dryly. "Yeah, I spend a lot of time outdoors these days. You should try it sometime, even as dark as your skin is you look like a fucking ghost." A ghost from her past, maybe. "We have some things to take care of right now, but once we're done with that... we're free. Dad's life work completed. So maybe we'll take you out, show you how to fend for yourself."

"Actually, I ain't too bad with a switchblade. Still a tunnel snake, and we rule," he puffs out his chest proudly.

After a few quiet moments she reaches across the table to take Butch's hand with tears in her eyes. "I never thought I'd see any of you ever again. It is so, so good to have you out here in my world." She clears her throat. "But we have to get going. Big day tomorrow, and I'll need sleep. I can find you down here, right?"

"Always."

* * *

Amelie leans heavily against me on the way back to our room, her hand wound in the back of my shirt. "That didn't bother you, did it?"

"What? You seeing a friend you never thought you ever would again? It doesn't bother me. He is not my competition."

"He doesn't hold a damn candle to you. I just... I had to make sure because I didn't even hesitate; I just hugged him and kept holding his hand, and... I don't even wanna know how it looked from the outside."

"Not that bad. You kept tearing up, though," I say with a smirk she can't see. Finally, we get to our room. I deposit her on the bed and she rolls into a comfortable position, boots and all. I start removing them, then try to worm her out of her jacket.

"Charon, if you wanna have sex you just have to say so," her voice muffled by the pillow as she slips closer to sleep. "You don't need to undress me."

"Shut up. You're tired, I'm tired," I throw her jacket on a chair across the room and curl up beside her, not even bothering to get undressed, "And I need you able to actually walk tomorrow."

"Good point," but her words roll into light snoring.

Knowing we are safe here, I curl up around her and follow her into sleep.


	30. Chapter 30

My instincts wake me early, firing off alarms in my head at the smell of smoke. My head whips side to side, searching for the source, and only finding Amelie in the chair across the room, feet up on the desk in front of her, smoking a cigarette and reading a book.

"What are you doing? You don't smoke."

She starts a bit at my voice breaking her concentration, but does not sway her eyes from the book. "I wanted to see what the hubbub was about and we have, like, six unopened cartons," she shrugs and flicks ash to the floor, "So why not? I see why people do this. I feel very relaxed right now. Relaxed, but alert."

I get out of bed, shaking the night off of me, out of my wrinkled clothes. I steal one from the pack and light it, enjoying a vice I haven't had the pleasure of since Ahzrukhal started holding my contract.

"God, that's good." My pulse races in a way only nicotine can cause. It has been far, far too long.

"Maybe this is all we should do now. Fuck the Brotherhood, fuck Purity. Let's just fuck and drink and smoke until we die," she peeks up at me.

"No, you're too responsible for that and you know it."

"As if you aren't?"

"Hey, I go where you go. For good or ill. If I make any good decisions, it's because you're rubbing off on me."

She stubs out the last of her butt and throws her book down - a tarnished copy of The Wizard of Oz. That's one I haven't seen in... centuries.

"Ugh, fine. Then get dressed, you. We're gonna go be responsible one last time.

***

Elder Lyons and his daughter, Sarah, invite us (mostly Amelie) to be a part of Lyons' Pride, their "special force" in the charge against the Enclave. They've even built a giant death robot that they've named Liberty Prime. He's lovely.

The whole fight to the Jefferson, us taking on Enclave soldiers with nothing but the armors on our backs and our own weapons, bleeds deja vu, and I get a bad feeling in my gut. I push the feeling to the side, I don't have time for it. I steal a glance at Amelie, and her face is screwed up in concentration or anger - too difficult to tell if she feels the same uneasy feeling.

There are only two Enclave soldiers inside the Jefferson gift shop, but the rotunda contains only that fucker, Colonel Autumn. He stands by the purifier's control console, hands clasped calmly behind his back.

The door to the rotunda locks behind me - snapped shut. No way out for any of us.

"Autumn, you fuckwit!" Amelie shouts, and storms into the purifier room to face him once and for all, her plasma rifle perched upon her stump aimed right at his shriveled heart.

The trenchcoat calmly turns to her and splays his hands in front of him, a false show of peace. "Now, now. There's no need to be hasty. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from killing you," he pulls his trenchcoat aside to reveal his holstered laser pistol, "And I will not hesitate to do so. Let's chat. You can give me the code and the FEV and I'll go ahead and start this purifier, and in exchange I let you and your... cohorts... live. For now."

She stares him down, and it's like time stops for an eternity. There's a glint in her eyes, the same one I saw when she shot Burke, the same one that gets my blood pumping. Autumn sees that look and in the same instant that she fires, he smashes a button on the console, closing and locking the door and separating us. Sarah Lyons and I smash and swing and shoot at the glass to no avail; it's locked until something forces it open.

Amelie's plasma hits the Colonel dead-center in his chest and he sinks to the floor, slowly melting, turning into goop. He tries to stare her down, but can't conceal the horror on his face.

"Fuck you, Colonel Assbag," Amelie spits at him. I almost laugh until I realize she was still trapped in a purifier that's shaking and unstable.

Dr. Li's voice chirps panickedly from an intercom to my left, something about how the purifier needs to be started now or it's gonna blow.

"When you activate it... the chamber is going to flood with radiation. I'm so sorry."

"What the fuck, Dr. Li? Why?" Amelie shouts at the intercom through the glass. I know what this means; she will die. And I will watch. And there's nothing I can do about it.

"I'm so sorry, Amelie. I... wish there was another way." Fuck Dr. Li. Fuck Project Purity. Fuck all of it.

Amelie stands in front of me, stares me in the eyes, two-inch glass between us as alarms go off in all directions around us.

"Lyons, get out of here." The pain that comes through in my voice is unmistakable.

Her voice wavers, but she stays strong. "I'm sorry. If there was any way to change things..."

"I know," Amelie says. "But get out of here. You'd be lucky to turn out like Charon when this blows." Sarah's power armor clunks as she scurries out, through now mysteriously unlocked doors. "Charon, I don't even know what to say -"

"Don't. This isn't the end for you." Who am I trying to convince?

"I dunno, it sure as hell feels like it," she chuckles with a shaky voice. "God, I'm gonna die like my dad did." And I'm going to watch, just like you did. And I'm going to be in this rotunda for the rest of my life, still trying to think my way out. "I love you, Charon," she says as she steps back, away from the glass to the console, "With all of my heart." She punches 2-1-6 into the console. "Go. Don't watch this." But I'm frozen. My head sears in white-hot pain as I disobey a direct order, but I can't move. She punches a large, red button and the purifier floods with radiation - warmth fills me, but Amelie cries out in pain and clutches her stomach, collapsing to her knees. This woman, this child, this innocent life, spares me one last glance before her eyes roll back in her head and she falls.

The activation knocked out the power to the doors, and I launch it open, flying to her limp body and carrying her out. No time to even see if she's still alive. No time. Have to leave, far away from this room or else it's all for nothing.

A vertibird takes us back to the Citadel. Dr. Li administers RadAway to her and Sarah, who hadn't gotten far away enough before the blow. Their faces are both flushed with red, sweat breaking out on their foreheads, but they're still breathing. The RadAway has to work. It just has to, before Amelie's organs liquify. Her breathing comes in short pants and her eyes flutter behind her eyelids uselessly, but she's alive and right now that's the best I can hope for her.


	31. Chapter 31

For two weeks, I suffer silently by her bedside, only leaving to relieve myself. Brotherhood squires, the oldest of which can only be about 13, bring me food and drink but they keep their distance. Probably for the best, since I feel as though I could turn feral any day now.

Sarah Lyons' status doesn't change much at all either, over the weeks. Every time I look over at her cot, a feeling of dread fills my stomach.

And then, suddenly, Amelie wakes up. Her eyes pop open and she gasps, and her eyes wildly search the room until she finds my face.

"Charon," she croaks tearfully, her voice hoarse from weeks of unuse, and she almost sounds... relieved.

"Amelie. I'm here, I'm here," I move from my seat to her bedside.

Her mouth pops open, about to say something as she searches for the right words.

"I was... dreaming," she rasps, "and my life was like a film. I ... I saw all of the amazing things we did together, Charon. All of it. And some of the not so amazing things. Defusing Megaton," I bring a bottle of water to her lips and she drinks deeply, "Tenpenny Tower, Bryan Wilks... and you were there lighting up every single memory, big guy. You lit up the world like a fucking sun." She clears her throat. "Do you know, now, how much you mean to me? Do you see? I thought I died, and getting glimpses of you in every memory was Heaven."

I take her pale hand and kiss it softly. "I was so afraid you were never going to wake up."

"I'm awake now. What have I missed?"

Dr. Li rushes in then with a weary look on her face. "I heard you woke up. Elder Lyons wanted me to come talk to you. I haven't been the doctor on watch for you... because I'm not a doctor, I'm a scientist. But we thought the news would be best coming from me, someone you know."

Amelie clears her throat again and sits up. "What's up, doc?"

Madison hesitates. "We think that, due to your upbringing, being born in the wasteland, then growing up in a sterile, rad-free environment, your strange mutation and now this... that your genetic make-up has gone through a few too many drastic changes."

My eyebrows come together in confusion, but Amelie is all business. "Meaning?"

"Meaning... the blast of rads two weeks ago should have killed you instantly. You should have liquefied from the inside out. But you didn't. You're lucky to be alive, but we don't know at what cost. There's a very high possibility that you could... become a ghoul. I'm sorry."

"Sorry? I'm not! What, so, I lose some skin but I get to live forever? I'll take that, if that's what happens."

Madison glances at me quickly. "Sorry. Most people wouldn't agree with you."

"Yeah, well," Amelie swings her feet off the bed and onto the floor, "I'm not most people. Whoa, okay, upright is hard. My head is swimming," she drops her head into her hands.

"That's just hunger and a bit of dehydration at work. I'll have a squire bring you two some food. Amelie..." Madison pauses, for an extremely long time.

"... Yes?"

"You should know, your actions weren't in vain. The purifier is active and working."

"Glad to hear it." Madison leaves, and I hear her down the hall, telling someone to send squires with trays of food to our room. The woman may be an emotionless robot at times, but she means well. Amelie slowly lifts her head from her hands and stares at Sarah Lyons' cot. "I was really hoping she would get out in time."

"They don't know why she's still out. She's intact, and by all means should be conscious. I am certain she will wake up soon. You did."

"Yeah, but apparently I'm some sort of genetic freak. Which, in this case, has benefited me greatly."

The oldest squire, a brown-eyed, brown-haired boy, walks into the room balancing two trays on his arms. He silently plops them on the bedside table, sneers at me, and turns to leave.

"Hey, kid, what's your problem?" Amelie demands.

"He faces her, a straight-backed and respectful soldier. "Apologies, ma'am. I'm not fond of his kind."

"What's your name?"

"Maxson, ma'am."

"Please leave that attitude of yours at the door, kid. Ghouls are people, human people, no different than you or me."

"With all due respect, ma'am, I disagree." He about-faces and leaves.

"What a little twerp!"

"It's nothing new, Amelie. People will always be bigots."

"But he's just a child. Already thinking this way so young... it's dangerous. Who knows what kind of damage a mind like that could do in ten years?"

I sit next to her on the cot as she takes a long pull from a bottle of water, and pull her close to me, craving her touch after the long weeks. "Then we'll worry about it in ten years."

She chuckles. "Hopefully we make it that long. I wanna stay out of trouble for a while, so naturally I'm sure trouble will come find us."

I smile, imagining an impossible world where her and I get to live a quiet life. "Oh, I'm sure it will."

*****

"We need you in order to launch one final attack upon the Enclave, Amelie. You've already taken out their defenses once - singlehandedly, no less. You are strong and smart - "

"And expendable, to you. No dice. I'm not sacrificing any more for you. As far as I'm concerned, Elder Lyons, the Brotherhood and I are square. Even." Amelie squares her shoulders and stands up, as tall as she can get, to make him take her seriously.

"No human life is expendable to the Brotherhood, least of all your life, where you've done so much for us."

"No. No, I'm done. I'm really done. I need a break from this. From life. I need to go feel normal for a while."

Elder Lyons, realizing his argument is futile (or, at the very least, conceding defeat for now) presses his lips together in a thin line. "Fine. When you change your mind, we will be here waiting. We need you."

Amelie stares him down, slings her pack over her shoulder and stalks out to the Citadel courtyard. Brotherhood soldiers stand at attention as we pass, but Amelie makes no notice of them. We turn toward the Med Ward, and before I can ask why, she tells me, "I need to ask Dr. Li about my dad's body. I don't dare ask Elder Lyons, because I don't trust him as far as I could throw his shitty old man body. But Dr. Li loved my dad. Probably still loves him a lot. At the very least, if she knows what happened to his body after everything went down... she'd take care of him."

All I can do is nod. She isn't wrong.

*****

"Are you feeling sick, Amelie? Because I'm not a doctor -"

"I know, you're a scientist. No, I feel fine. Tip top tip. I was hoping you, or someone, might know what happened to my dad's body. After he died we ran and I don't know anything else. And then everything just... kept happening."

Madison purses her lips. "The Brotherhood cremated him at my request. I have his ashes... I was going to hold onto them until you were ready."

Oh, sure you were. "Can I have them, please?" Amelie's voice is gentle - the voice she uses to talk to mostly-harmless animals in the wild to soothe them. "I just want to move on. Dad deserves to move on."

Madison nods, walking to her office to retrieve the ashes of a dead man she once loved, to give them to his amputee daughter and her zombie boyfriend.

When I put it like that, this whole thing seems like a bad horror film from my days.

She emerges from her office with an old coffee can and holds it out to Amelie gingerly. "It's a little unceremonial, but it worked."

"Hey, it works for me." Amelie takes the can and holds it almost reverently, yet at the same time her eyes scream as if she's holding a venomous animal. I reach for it, because with only one hand she'll have a time and a half carrying it. "Put it in my pack, please. It's too weird to be carrying him around. At least if he... or it, is in my pack it just feels like cargo." Her voice warbles a bit, and she takes a deep breath.

"Are you two leaving the Citadel now?"

"Yes. Hopefully for good. I just want to live my life."

"I understand." Madison drops her voice to a whisper. "This... is not an ideal situation for me. The military presence the Brotherhood maintains here terrifies me. I have to do what I must right now, but as soon as I can... I'm getting out."

"Good luck to you, Madison."

"You too. Both of you... be safe out there."

Amelie takes my hand, winding our fingers together, not in a show of defiance, but out of a need for comfort and belonging as we exit the Citadel for what is hopefully the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: HAHAHA, I died for like a year or something. I'm so sorry. Life kinda got in the way for a while, and then I lost all motivation, and then I found motivation again but I kept having ideas for future chapters and having to write them without any idea what my actual NEXT STEP is, I just keep predicting the future. But I think I've finally got it. Anyway, I'm sorry if this is a bit rusty. It's been a while. But a great big thank you to all of the people who continued to read and give kudos to this story in my absence. It really kept me motivated to keep going, even though it may not seem like it. I really appreciate you all.)


	32. Chapter 32

We get nearly out of sight of the Citadel when Amelie breaks, falling to her knees. She buries her head in her hands and cries silently, with a forgotten scream lost on her lips. She didn't cry like this right after he died - those sobs were loud and filled with pain. No, this is a... visceral, primal pain. This is the reality of his death, in her hands. Just an orphaned child. I kneel down next to her and pull her close to my chest; she cries into my neck.  
"It feels like I have," she sobs, "no one."  
"You have me."  
"No, I mean I have no family left!"  
"That is not true. I am your family. Dogmeat. Even Butch. And Gob, and Carol and Greta. You don't have to be blood to be family."  
This only makes her sob harder, and I don't understand why. She takes a few minutes just to calm down, then stop crying altogether. She sniffles and I hand her my pocket rag.  
"Look, Amelie, if having blood family is this important to you, maybe you do have family out here. Your parents must have had parents, and they may have even had siblings. We have a picture of your parents to use as a reference... maybe we can find some long lost family." It's something to focus on, at least.  
She blows her nose on the rag and hands it back to me. "That's an idea. My mom... she had a last name. I just have to remember it. Maybe Dad had something, documents, anything. That would make it easier, right?"  
"Yes, much easier than just a picture. If they were officially married, not just Wasteland married, there might have been some documentation."  
"So, then, I think we should start at the Jefferson. See if Dad left anything behind that I missed before. I know what I'm looking for now."  
"Certainly. To the Jefferson, then?"  
She smiles widely, tears still on her cheeks, but hope in her eyes. "Yup."

xxxxx

The place is still crawling with Brotherhood soldiers, all trying to play cleanup crew and bottle some purified water to distribute to the masses. I crouch behind a bush instinctively before I remember that they aren't quite the enemy. Sure, their ideals are a little skewed, but they're definitely the lesser of two evils.  
Star Paladin Cross, on her knees at the edge of the Potomac, spots Amelie and I (though, who could miss us?) and dashes over. She's a sweet woman, visiting Amelie every day while she was unconscious. She explained to me that she was the one who transported James and baby Amelie to Vault 101 all those years ago. She kept them safe.  
"Paladin Cross, it's good to see you made it to the other side of all this," Amelie greets the dark-skinned woman with a handshake.  
"You as well. I visited you many times after the incident, hoping you would wake up. I'm glad to see you are as healthy as ever." I snort.  
"Well, a handful of genetic mutations sure do help, right?" Amelie says with a smile. "Actually, Cross, there's something you may be able to help me with. Now that all of my family is gone, I want to find any remaining relatives I may have. Do you know if either of my parents had any siblings? Or, hell, if their parents were alive?"  
"Hmm..." Cross thinks for a moment. "James had a brother named... S something. Samuel, or Sandy, or Sydney... I can't be sure, now. I don't know what ever became of him. He fled DC a short while before you were born. And then with your mother's passing... James shut down. His only focus was on you - on keeping you safe."  
Amelie nods. "Do you know what my mother's last name was?"  
"No, I don't. Since most folks out here don't bother with them, I never take note if someone has one. I'm sorry."  
"It's fine. Actually, could you tell me one more thing? Were they married, or were they Wasteland married?"  
Cross gives Amelie a sad smile. "As far as I am aware, it was never official. There was never any time to do such things when they were so hard at work on Project Purity."  
"Thank you, Paladin Cross. This was actually very helpful. Process of elimination, and all that," she says with a soft smile. "Are we allowed inside? I need to look at anything Dad left behind."  
"Of course. You are the one who saved all of this, after all."  
"Thanks. We'll see you later."

xxxxx

James' quarters are a scattered mess, just how he left them. Notes and holotapes everywhere, thankfully most of them labeled. The only items of importance that we find are two holotapes, each marked in a neat handwriting, an opposite of James' careful scrawled penmanship. Amelie looks at me, shrugs, and pops the one marked '10-04-57' into her Pip-Boy.  
It must be Catherine's voice pumping out of the speakers - I recognize it from that night in the Tenpenny bathroom those few months ago, before all of this started.  
"Private log. It's October... 4th, nearly 7PM. The other night, James and I took a break from working so hard just to be with each other and... wow, did we need it. I realized we hadn't had a conversation about anything but Project Purity in months... maybe even almost a year. I know this is important to both of us, to all of us, but... I needed that break. I can't be the head of this project one hundred percent of the time. And I love James. He is who I have chosen to be with for the rest of my life. We can't forget that, in all of this craziness - we do love each other."  
The holotape beeps as it ends. Amelie takes a deep breath to steady herself - this is only the second time she's hearing Catherine's voice in her whole life. She pops out the October holotape, pockets it, and pops in one labeled 01-17-58.  
"Private log. January 17th, 5 in the morning. I haven't slept very well. I haven't been able to keep much food down lately, either. The only thing I ever want to eat is Salisbury Steak, and although everyone is grateful to pass it on to me, we're starting to run low on food in general. We need to make more supply runs more often, but it's getting dangerous." Catherine, all the way back in 2258, sighs heavily. "I am beginning to think I might be sick. I just feel so ill, all over my body. Something is definitely wrong with me. There is an alternative idea to sickness... but I don't want to even speak the words. I could never... I could never bring a child into this world."  
The second holotape beeps. Amelie takes it out and, along with the other one, stores them in a safe pocket of her pack. Her hands shake, but her face is calm.  
"Well, too bad on that one, mom," she chuckles. "Do you think the October holotape is... when I was conceived? Is that why dad kept these two?"  
"It would seem that way. They had a date night in October, a few months later your mother is feeling sick... and you were born in July. It adds up."  
"That's... gross." I raise a brow at her. "Not the fact that I was created, because I'm great and really cool. Just that dad kept these as some sort of weird reminder."  
"I don't blame him. If I lost you, I would want to hold on to anything that may have once been a piece of you, even if it was just a holotape. These, as well as the one you listened to a few months ago, seem to be the only ones around here that were Catherine's."  
"I guess that makes sense. If I lost you... well, I can't even think about it long enough to form a hypothetical." She rummages through old boxes in James' file cabinet before stopping dead in her tracks, staring at James' desk. "There's a button."  
"A button."  
"There's a button on the underside of his desk!" She rushes over, slamming the button with her palm. A floor panel under the desk lifts slightly and shifts to the side, revealing a floor safe. "Are you kidding me? This has been here the whole time?!" She makes quick work picking the lock with her deft hands, and the safe door screeches open.  
There are only three things inside this safe, but they are important. The first, a large sack, possibly the size of Amelie's torso, which she rattles and determines is filled with caps; this, she hands to me to put in my pack. The second, a note from James that Amelie folds carefully and sticks in her breast pocket. The third... another holotape, with a date written on it in Catherine's careful hand.  
07-13-58.  
"That's... my birthday. This could have been the last thing my mom did before I was born, before she died..." She leans back on her heels and holds James' note so we can both read it, though she reads it aloud anyway:

"Amelie,  
The threat of the Enclave grows ever closer, and I am afraid we may not be long for this world. If you make it to the other end of this, there are so many things I wish I could have told you. Please know, anything I hid from you was for your own safety, or the safety of others. I never wanted to keep secrets from you. But I had to protect so many others. I hope you understand... since you are the same way.  
Everything in this safe belongs to you. I knew you would be smart enough to figure it out. Listen to the holotape, but not here. No witnesses. But you deserve to know.  
I love you more than my own life. I will always be with you.  
\- Dad"

Amelie folds the note and puts it back in her breast pocket. "He never wanted to keep secrets from me, but this note only gave me more questions. I guess now we go home and listen to this. Whatever it is, I'm not trusting anyone else with it." 


	33. Chapter 33

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Please, please please see my notes at the end before you go!)

"Personal log. July 13, 2258. I just gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Beautiful and healthy with big green eyes already, just like her father. Her name is Amelie. I am so sad I will never get to know her. I have to leave the Capital Wasteland, immediately, because my presence here puts everyone in danger. S has already set up a new life for me... I can't say where. I can say... North. The brightest minds once belonged there. Maybe they're still there, developing new technology. Creating something new that could change the face of science."  
Amelie spouts, "Oh my god." She stands up suddenly and with purpose. "It's been 20 years. Is there even a chance she's still there? Still alive?"  
"There is always a chance. Maybe your mother is unkillable, like you," I say through a smile that she returns.  
"So, North..."  
"The Institute."  
"The Commonwealth?"  
"It's a start."  
She paces around the room, a plan brewing in her head already. "I can only hope. What do we do? How do we get there? Is it far?"  
"Whoa, whoa whoa. Amelie." I cross the room to her and pull her to my chest. "Do you remember how long it took you to get to the Pitt?"  
"Yeah. Took like, a whole day to get there on the lever train thing."  
"The Commonwealth is further. By train, it would probably be two or three. It's called a handcar, by the way. And I don't know that they ever established a rail system going that far North before everyone in 2077 started launching bombs at each other. If we decide to travel to the Commonwealth, you have to know it may take us a few weeks." She sighs, resigned. "I am not saying it's impossible. I am saying we need to be prepared. I have not traveled that route in 50 years. I don't know what it holds anymore."

&&&&&

Crazy Wolfgang, after helping transport Butch from Rivet City to Megaton, provides us with a rudimentary map of what used to be some parts of Maryland, the area just north of us now. He also gives us the name of a caravan trader friend of his who we may run into on our way, someone who might be able to help. This is all we have - this, and the packs on our backs.  
And the dog. Can't forget about him.  
"Now, Butch, Wadsworth is now under your control and you are now his owner, but that doesn't mean you get to hurt him or dismantle him in any way."  
"I hadn't planned on it, Ame. You're bein' nice enough to let me live in your house for free, I wouldn't do that to you. Or the robot."  
"I appreciate that. But I couldn't charge you anything to live here anyway. I don't know if we'll ever come back," Amelie says as she folds clothing to shove in our packs.  
"What, so now I probably won't ever see you again? Listen, Ame, that doesn't fly with me. What if you die out there?"  
"It is what it is, Butch. Look..." she drops a stack of shirts she had been holding, and sighs heavily. She turns to Butch, putting her palms on either side of his face. "I will send you a note every month telling you I am okay. I can't tell you where we're going, what we're doing... but I can tell you that I'm okay. Does that work for you? Because it's the best I can do."  
He stares into her eyes, frightened by her closeness, her wild eyes. He nods once, quick. "A-and you aren't leavin' me with the dog?"  
Amelie lets go of his face and smirks, turning back to the shirts she dropped. "I really don't like the idea of putting him in danger like this, but I can't bear the thought of being without him. Sorry. If you want to get a new dog, you're more than welcome to. This is your place now."  
Butch nods again. "What's there to do for jobs around here? The housin' may be free, but food and drink and girls ain't."  
"Actually, since the only other decent barber in town is Wadsworth, I think you've got a pretty good chance of starting your own business here. Enough to survive, y'know?" He considers it for a moment, then nods. I remember, months ago, he said he wanted to do more with his life than be the Vault barber. Poor kid. "Oh, shit!" Amelie drops the shirts again.  
"What? What's wrong?" My heart races.  
"Gob. And Nova. We're going to just leave them, let them be stuck with Moriarty for the rest of their lives..."  
I cross the room and pull her close to me. "I'll poison him in his sleep before we go. Does that sound alright?"  
She chuckles. "That would be ideal, if we could just get that done before we go. Then Gob and Nova can take over the bar and finally be free... hey, Butch, maybe they'd let you open up shop down there! Nova would be giddy to get her hands on you." Butch, eyes wide, looks slightly terrified.  
“This Nova… she hot?”  
“The hottest.” He looks to me for confirmation, as if Amelie’s opinion on how beautiful a girl is is not convincing enough. I shrug; Nova is visually pleasing to look at, but I would not say she is the “hottest”. That title is reserved for my own partner.  
Butch smirks, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Well, alright then! Let’s let you kids get a move on, go poison a guy because I guess that’s perfectly fine, normal human behavior now, and get this show on the road! You’ve got a … whatever you’re doing, to do! I’ve got girls to meet and a life to start!”

&&&&&

Moriarty was dead before he knew it, shot with enough Med-X to knock out a brahmin, while he slept. It’ll look like a heart attack or an aneurysm, something that could happen to anyone. And even if the Sheriff is suspicious, Amelie and I are leaving town and taking that heat with us… probably forever.  
With Colin dead upstairs, his bedroom door still locked from the inside, the five of us have something that resembles a celebration - Gob and Nova still feeling out their freedom, swing dancing together to some old song on the radio, Amelie and Butch joining them with a very sterilized version of the same. I sip my drink, wanting nothing more than to enjoy the show.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (AN: This story is now officially completed. But it's only because I accidentally ended up writing a bunch of stuff for a future arc, and I really felt like it needed to be its own thing. That's coming soon, at least the first few chapters once I get them edited and typed and such. I've had them written for months, I just needed to figure out how to put this one to bed first. I'm so excited to share this with you all.
> 
> Also? I know this is like, maybe one of the cheesiest endings to a story ever, but since it's not The End and you can get part 2 very soon, I'm hoping you'll forgive me. I wanted this to wrap up on a good note. I'll probably end up rewriting it in a couple months because I'll look back and have a lot of regrets.)


End file.
